Chapter Eleven
Nobody talked on the way back.
Beowolves were good diggers. Like rescue dogs, only without the intention of rescuing anyone, but just biting down on those they could find until they stopped screaming, probably. Zhelty drove in silence, and Chez remained quiet. Gorm and I stood on the top of a smaller haul, but which also included some nice looking weapons. The wallets had been found, and emptied.
We'd leave the identity cards with a letter explaining where their bodies were at the local hospital.
It wasn't theft, not by Vacuo's laws. The dead had no rights; and what someone doesn't use, someone else can. It made us feel a bit queasy, but we'd make a bit more than even if everything sold properly.
"Well, you did need new boots, no?" I croaked out. Gorm heard me, but said nothing.
"One thing I was told," Chez said, trying to lighten the situation, "Was that taking stuff from the dead should be viewed as a positive thing. The dead, if they were kind in life, would want us to have their stuff and if they were unkind, then they kind-of deserve being punished for their evil ways. So you shouldn't feel bad about it."
"We'll have to go back anyway," Gorm muttered in the end. "There are more containers we can cut down, and I think if we're careful, we can pull the wiring from the mine's walls."
"Let's start looking for other places too," Zhelty said in the end. "I'll ask my pops about it. Maybe he knows somewhere we can go."
As she said that, I glanced at the horizon of the dunes of sand that formed Vacuo's desert. It was a beautiful sight, if one ignored the dead beneath the sands.
I furrowed my brows as I saw a streak of black smoke over the horizon. I squinted, trying to make sense of it. "Gorm, what's that?"
"The usual Dust train," Gorm said. "It's SDC-only, for carrying raw dust and supplies to the refineries."
I turned thoughtful.
"I just had an idea," I said.
"We are not assaulting a train," Chez said. "Too much of a hassle."
"No, I wasn't thinking about that," I stressed out. "But, where trains go, train stations follow, yes?"
"I don't know if the train or the train station came first, but we're not doing an egg or chicken thing," Gorm grumbled back. Then he blinked. "Oh, I got it. I understood what you're trying to say!" he sounded excited. "Yes, we can do that!"
"Explain to the class?" Zhelty grumbled, stalling the engine and letting the bike continue down a gentle slope by itself.
"Where there's train stations, there's got to be a reason for them. Like refineries, or building annexes," I said. "And since lots of refineries were abandoned when the raw materials came less, if we manage to modify ever so slightly your motorbike, and get it on an unused section of the rails..."
"We can have our own scrap train," Zhelty acquiesced, "And if the rails are in good conditions, we can go further without risking much, and carry back more without troubles-"
"The rails are SDC property," Gorm muttered. "They won't be happy about it."
"They need to know we're using them anyway. How hard can it be to mechashift some kind of rail-attachment?" I remarked.
Chez snickered. "Sounds like a lot of work."
"We're going to have to start putting money aside. If we want something fast, we're going to need to add Fire Dust and Gravity Dust to the bike's design," Zhelty said. She was thinking about it. "It's not something that we'll be capable of doing today, or tomorrow."
"No, but it's a solution to our problem," I hummed, "Then, maybe, we can even add skis to slide on the sands rather than wheels, and get a wind-sail working, and maybe-"
"Oi, oi, oi!" Zhelty yelled, "It's my pop's bike! Some modification is fine, turning it into something else isn't!"
I huffed and rolled my eyes. "Fine."
It became harder to say yes once I realized just how much money we'd have to put aside for it. It was for the sake of making more money, and anyway it was something we would need. I had suggested it, everyone was aboard about it, and thus there was no choice but to start pouring money into it.
We showed up one fine morning with what savings we wished to part with, and that was when I realized I had made a mistake.
"Wren, how do you have that much?" Zhelty asked, staring at the amount of bills in my hands. They were all wrinkled, and dirty with motor oil. There was no doubt they had come from her father, but the question was how I had managed to keep from spending so many.
"My diet mainly consists of rice, tap water and what meat I eat is usually bought at the end of the day for extra saving," I pointed out. I had been an university student once in the past. I could live on ten euros a week, so this was nothing. "Also helps to be friendly with the butcher and the baker," I added.
"Vegetables," Gorm said, "Do you not have vegetables?"
"Cactus fruits cost little," I answered. "I dunno if they're vegetables or not, but I eat my greens...every now and then."
"Anyway," Zhelty stammered out, bringing the conversation along. "We have-well, I think we can get started on it. Pops said it's fine to use the stuff from the scrap shop for free, but he doesn't have we'll have to buy ourselves."
It would take a few months.
And in the passage of a few months, a lot of things could change. We went through certain Beginner classes that ranged from the wildly interesting 'Footwork techniques that work with sand' to more practical 'Dodging bullets is possible, but first start by dodging rocks'. Through it all, one thing began to strike me as odd.
Some people had bruises at the beginning of the lesson, but stopped having them by the end of it.
It became clearer once we got into our first actual lesson concerning 'Aura and You: Why It's Stupid To do Combat Field Practice before unlocking it'.
The subtitle had been helpfully added by my sarcastically-inclined mind.
There was just one problem with it.
"Are you kidding me!?" I yelled. Professor Rassvet actually winced at the sheer volume of spite I had spewed in his direction. He cleaned one of his ears and ignored my outburst.
"As I was saying, some of you may have already unlocked your Aura, and some of you may be on the verge of doing so. Training, extreme training, will normally do it. Your body may break before your spirit does, and that is what you are looking for. This is where some people actually stop, or pick the easy way out of having someone else unlock their aura for them. You're going to train until you can no longer stand. And when you can no longer stand, you will be asked to stand up again. And after you've fallen, we will ask you to get back up. We will repeat this until you either awaken, or your willpower gets crushed," Professor Rassvet glanced at all those in attendance as he said that. "So, with that being said, hit the gym. We'll call you once we see you're adequately at the verge of passing out."
I glanced at the rest of my friends. "It looks like this is going to hurt," I muttered.
"No pain, no gain," Gorm answered most wisely.
"Maybe I should pick the lazy option," Chez said. Once Professor Rassvet told her how much it would cost, she actually decided for the tiring, painful method.
I was relatively sure that hitting fourteen and a half year old teenagers was grounds for child abuse, but it didn't really matter to the professors.
We ran, we did weights, we broke into puddle of sweats with push-ups. We did everything that was tiring, and extreme. Our muscles were actually screaming at us to stop, but we couldn't, because we had to go beyond our bodies. It was like attempting to go past a wall that was normally insuperable, and even with the lungs burning, even with my lunch and breakfast resting on the ground from having spewed them out, even then-we still went at it.
We still went at it, until some of us collapsed by themselves, and others instead resolutely marched on. Some ground their teeth, and others had eyes that burned with some unknown determination. It was their fuel. When their muscles, when their bodies stopped, it was what they believed in that made them go forward.
"Maso-Wren!" I heard my voice being called through the haze of the world made of blurry blotches. I didn't have lungs anymore. I had furnaces. I could barely feel my legs as I jogged towards the voice of my doom, feeling the pools of dread within me rise as the treacherous whisper in the back of my head told me that perhaps, just perhaps, I would never be capable of unlocking my Aura by myself.
The fist I received to the face knocked me down. The kick into my stomach felt like someone had pushed a freight train into it.
"Long ago, way, way in the past, they used to throw prospective huntsmen to the Grimm," Professor Rassvet remarked from above. "Fighting swarms of them, many died but a selected few survived. Those normally unlocked Aura. It's because Aura is found in the depths of a human's despair. It is the ember of hope, hidden in the turmoil of incoming death. So, Maso-Wren, hope you're ready to grit your teeth."
I barely managed to stumble back to my feet. "Taking it like a punching bag isn't going to work. You need to feel it, the desire to fight back," the instructor droned on, my breathing so short and the pain so much, I just wanted it all to end.
But-But if I did that, I'd never make it.
I wanted it all to end.
I had to not want it to end.
My head rang from the blow that struck the side of my face, but my feet did not give away.
I was getting hammered. I was getting punched and kicked. I wanted to curl into a fetal position and-and no. No, I wasn't.
This wasn't what I wanted. I had pride. I didn't want to be on the ground, crying and begging for mercy. I would die, but I would die standing. It lurked within me. I could feel it. I had a chance. There was no insurmountable obstacle, no unbeatable foe. There was only my determination, and how far I would go to grasp it.
My arms burned as I brought my left one up, the fist coming for me uncaring as it went right through my guard. I stumbled back.
This wasn't enough.
I knew I had to fight back.
But I didn't need to know it. I needed to feel it. I needed to feel like I had to fight back.
My head was ringing.
My thoughts were in disarray.
You will never...defeat me? Was that what the letter had said? I couldn't remember.
There was a kick. It was coming. I didn't want it to come. I didn't want it to hurt. I wanted it to go away.
Only I could make it go away.
Only I, and no one else.
My soul I unbind from death, and may my body break before my spirit ever does! I will earn my place through the destruction of Mankind's enemies, for as long as I rage in the name of those I cherish and love, then Remnant shall yet know hope. That is who I am. That is why...
"I am broken, but unbowed!" I screamed as I slammed my punch against the incoming kick. I didn't hit it; the professor avoided the counter-attack. I struck the ground and my muscles snapped. They snapped, and yet it was as if the wall that had been there had suddenly disappeared. My muscles hadn't just snapped. They had...stopped hurting.
The pain I felt slowly but inevitably doused itself, a cold shower-like feeling went through me from head to toe. My blurred vision became normal again, my breathing caught up to my freshened lungs, and I knew, without a doubt, that the man in front of me was the greatest bastard in the history of all bastards.
"For your information, this is all your fault for being a dumb masochist," Professor Rassvet remarked calmly. "If you hadn't pushed yourself so much, it would have been way easier."
Amiably, I showed him the middle-finger before stepping with still unsure steps outside the gym and into the courtyard, where other successful huntsmen-to-be now where.
I found my pleasant corner of happiness and collapsed there with a dreadful sigh.
A few seconds later, the figure of one extremely tired Gorm joined me. A minute, and Chez dropped her head down on my legs without a care in the world that she was sweatier than a drenched-wet mop. Zhelty came last, and collapsed against the wall by my side.
"I'm not going through that again," I muttered in disbelief.
"Not like you can go through it again," Gorm mumbled back.
"Can I have a piggyback home?" Chez asked. "Because I'm not moving otherwise."
Zhelty realized that the wall behind her was hard, and my legs instead looked soft enough, thus her head came down on my other free leg soon enough. "Comfortable enough," she grumbled.
I turned my gaze towards Gorm. "Is that the gaze of someone offering leg space, or are you asking me to help you?" Gorm said in a tired voice.
"What do you think?" I said with as much ice in my voice as I could muster.
"Leg space it is," Gorm said before dropping down next to Chez. "He does have comfortable legs," Gorm added as I just looked in disbelief.
I had stupid people as friends.
But it was nice to know that we'd be in this together, until the very end.
.
