In the ideal weather, birds would be singing and flowers would be blooming as the sun shone down from the sky, today was not the ideal weather. At some point in the night, it had started to rain heavily in the night, so when Rusty got up and headed to garrison A and got there completely soaked, just to find out he had arrived half an hour too early, forcing him to sit in the rain as he killed time waiting for the doors to open. Eventually somebody opened the doors and Rusty went inside, heading straight for their team’s meeting room which filled up with the rest of the team over time. As their morning went on Rusty was pleasantly surprised to find out that their team had been given a mission in which they would start tomorrow, where their team would be escorting some noble person to East-Rixon while also delivering some important documents to the cities main garrison, and then escort the noble back to West-Rixon. To Rusty, the job sounded rather boring, but better boring than dangerous, especially after his first mission. After the captain was done informing everyone for the day and everyone started to prepare for patrols, the captain called Rusty and Taste to the front of the room.

“You two aren't going on patrol today,” said the captain, to which Rusty heard Taste mutter something celebratory under his breath, “Because you’re new recruits you have to go on a training mission, here,” the captain said handing them both a piece paper with a location on it, “Go there and get the training over with.”

Rusty and Taste both nodded and started heading out of the room, as they did so Rusty looked to Lawrence who was standing at the patrol route map waiting for Rusty who he was originally supposed to go on a patrol with today. Lawrence had an annoyed look on his face and motioned for Rusty to come over so they could start the patrol but Rusty decided to shake his head instead of just telling him that he couldn’t anymore which gave Lawrence a confused look as Rusty and Taste headed out the door.

It took a few minutes and some direction asking to find the room on the papers they were given but the two of them did it eventually. When the two entered the room they found around a hundred or so other new recruits in the room which was surprisingly large enough to hold all of them without being cramped. All of the other recruits were wearing the regular iron looking armor that was standard for the soldier of their military while Rusty and Taste were in full crimson and stood out like a sore thumb.

“I hope no one from my old academy is here,” Taste said to Rusty.

Just as Rusty was about to reply and ask Taste why that was a small group of four people around Rusty and Taste’s age came through the crowd walking in the direction, “Hey Mac!” One of the four said waving, to which neither waved back.

"Goddammit." Taste mumbled.

"Are they from your old academy?" Rusty asked Taste.

"Yes."

“Did they bully you or something?” asked Rusty who was subtly reaching for his bottle.

“No.” 

“Then why didn’t you wave back?” Rusty said as the group approaching them was now only a few meters away.

“I just don’t like them,” Taste whispered, “Hey guys how are you doing?” He said walking towards the group.

“We’ve been pretty good Mac, but we haven’t seen you for over a month now, where have you been?” one of them asked, in their group, there were two boys and two girls, they didn’t seem like the type to forget to find a job after school was done and forced into the military like Rusty, occasionally some people with high tiers would join the military because having a high tier usually leads to success in the military, meaning they must have high tiers. In their group each of them looked rather normal, the girls were both fit, one was a brunette while the other was blond, the two guys were polar opposites, one was almost Rusty’s height, rather lanky with pure white hair and eyes to match while the other was short with black hair and was somewhat fat but not to the point where he looked like he needed to eat less, other then the white-haired boy they all had brown or blue eyes.

Taste scratched the back of his head, “Oh well I've been...uh... with Rusty! Yeah, that’s it,” as Taste said this he nudged Rusty's side and whispered, “Help me.”

“We had a mission that lasted a while,” Rusty said to the group.

“A mission, so you're in a squad? Although from your armor it's pretty obvious,” said one of the girls, “We should probably head back to our main to where we were told to meet up.”

“Yeah you’re right,” said that short boy, “Weill be seeing you then Mac,” said the boy as their group headed back in the direction that they came from.

“Thankfully it’s over,” said Taste beside Rusty.

“It wasn’t that bad, they were actually pretty nice, weren't they mac?”

“Shut it.”

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After several more minutes of killing time while other new recruits from different parts of the city piled into the room, eventually some of the royal knights marched into the room, you could tell they were royal knights because they wore jagged black armor and childish-looking bright red capes, some more torn then other from battles, there were few in the kingdom but now there was nine all in the same room. The knights walked to the back of the room where there was a large set of doors leading to a large courtyard, once there, one of the knights pulled out a scroll and started to yell out different troop numbers and telling them to go with some of the knights, making the room becoming emptier and emptier as well as leaving Rusty feeling as though there was more information to this that the captain didn’t tell them.

Eventually, the only night left was the one holding the scroll in a now mostly empty room. Across the room, Rusty and Taste saw the group they met earlier waving at them to which taste pretended he didn't see them, giving him the luxury of not waving back.

“Anyone still left!” The knight shouted to the rest of the remaining ten or so recruits remaining in the room, “I will be you’re training guide, you’re group is smaller because you are all in squads, now, follow me!” He shouted as he began to walk towards the door that Rusty and Taste entered from with everyone left following him.

Other then the group they met earlier, there was also a group of three girls in yellow armor and a single guy in dark blue armor who followed as well. As they groups walked through the halls of the garrison following the royal knight the group in yellow armor and the group from earlier talked among themselves while Rusty and Taste, as well as the guy in blue, stayed silent throughout their walk. The knight leading their group had a much more covered up appearance then the other knights, unlike the other he didn’t have a cape but instead it was more of a cloak with a hood, from the back Rusty couldn’t even recognize him as a knight. Eventually the groups were led outside the garrison where a small canopy-less wagon was waiting with two horses to pull it. After the knight hopped up onto the wagon to steer, all of the groups assumed what they were supposed to do and got themselves into the wagon. While most of the people decided to go to the back of the wagon and climb on the blue guy instead decided to use his ability and seemingly levitated onto the wagon.

When the blue guy levitated into the wagon the knight at the reins stood up, “You're in the military now, and a squad no less! Don’t just use your ability whenever you want, do you go around showing everyone your ass?! No, you don’t! You should treat your ability the same way while you're in the military,” the guy in blue didn’t seem to think too deeply about what the knight had said, but Rusty took the words into consideration. Shortly after everyone was on the wagon it started to move and their group was off.

“Alright!” Shouted the knight, “Because your all in squads already your training is going to be different from the others, unlike the other recruits who go through a day or two of training and such, you all get to come along with me on a mission outside of the city, we’ll arrive in about two hours, if you disobey my orders at any point, you’ll be off you’re squads and get to be normal recruits, understood? And that goes double for what I said earlier about not using your abilities whenever, if an enemy sees your ability in action then not only are you making it harder on yourself and your team if you’re attacked. Do I make myself clear?” Everyone in the wagon verbally agreed, “Good!” Said the knight as he turned around to steer and started to hum to himself. As the ride went along.

Rusty stared at the knight for a bit before coming back to the reality that was the rest of the people in the wagon with him. Directly to Rusty’s left Taste was busy being talked to death by the group they met earlier while the blue guy appeared to meditate in the wagons back corner and across from him were the group of girls in yellow who were playing a three-way game of rock paper scissors in which it seemed each one chose the same thing every time, it was kinda weird. Rusty closed his eyes for a moment and sighed, it would be a long ride. Once Rusty opened his eyes and looked across from where he was sitting he found himself face to face with the white-haired boy from the other group holding his blood bottle, which luckily for Rusty was in a solid-state.

“Curious,” said the boy holding Rusty’s bottle up to the light of the sun, “Is this what your ability can do? How did you get it in the bottle?”

Rusty quickly took back the bottle from the boy, “C’mon, you heard what he said, we not supposed to talk about our abilities, now leave me alone for a while, I’m going to take a nap.”

As Rusty reattached his bottle to his belt much tighter than before, he hears the white-haired boy say, “I’m sure I’ll find out eventually,” but Rusty decided to ignore it and nap until they had arrived at their destination.