- So, what are we doing today?

- Already talking? Don’t make me regret my decision kid.

- Damn, you really are an ass

- World is full of asses, get used to it

- Yeah, I can see that      

- You’re pushing your luck

- Whatever, I’m gonna stop talking but at least tell me what are we going to do

- We have patrolling duty today so you can take it easy

- Thanks. That’s all I was asking for

We walked in silence for a while. I had a lot of questions about the job, how he became a rank 5 agent, what big things had he done in the past, but I couldn’t even breath without him getting mad. The most interesting of those things was the rank part, since it wasn’t easy.

When you became an actual agent, you start at rank 1. There are 7 ‘normal’ ranks, plus one special rank above those 7, so, the thing goes something like this:

Trainee Candidate

Trainee

Agent Candidate

Rank 1 Agent

Rank 2 Agent

Rank 3 Agent

Rank 4 Agent

Rank 5 Agent

Rank 6 Agent

Rank 7 Agent

Special Agent

There are rumors that there are agents with skills above the special agents that are kept a secret because they do dangerous or classified missions which only a few people knew about. I say that’s all bullshit, what would they need those kind of mysteries for? Who was such an important enemy for them to keep everything so secret, even from their own people? It didn’t make sense at all.

Back to the ranks, if I’m not mistaken, once you reach rank 3 you start getting assigned bigger and more important missions, like participating in assaults to supposed criminal lairs and such. Before that, you mainly had patrolling duty and that’s it. That was something that surprised me as well about our tutors. All of them were above rank 4, which meant they had some important stuff going on, so why take them out of their usual jobs to train a couple of newbies? They could have assigned us some lower rank agents who actually had patrolling to do. It was weird, but after President Ramos’ speech, I assumed it was because they needed better trained agents, and only the high ranks could do that, even if that meant to delay their main missions for a bit.

The other important thing about getting past rank 3 was that you could start using a different weapon besides the one-handed short sword that they gave the trainees and low ranks, not only the style, but the actual sword could be one specially customized for you, which was one of the main reasons I wanted to get to climb ranks as fast as possible, so I could get a sword that uses my mother’s handle. That’s were your true talent, training and effort became relevant, because at that point you are acquainted with the job to the point you could start developing your preferred style while working.

Although you could choose whatever weapon you liked, the majority of people stayed with the short sword because they’ve been using it all the way from trainee to rank 3, which could take around 5 years if not more. So, after that much time using the same weapon, changing to another completely different style was difficult, scary and sometimes useless since you would be less skilled. Of course, there were agents who used their free time to train this secondary style so they don’t fall back once they get to rank 3.

I started wondering what would be my mentor’s style, when we stopped in front of one of the few doors I could recognize, the locker room door.

- Wait here, I’m gonna grab my sword and uniform so we can leave.

- Can I come in? My locker is in this room too and I need to do something

- Do what you want, just don’t bother me.

Such a wonderful person….

We both entered the room and John went straight to the back, where I assumed his locker was. I walked a bit lost for a minute until I found my own locker (after failing to open other three that I thought were mine), opened it and grabbed my bag. I took the handle from the inside and looked at it while whispering

- I could really use your help right now mom, my tutor isn’t exactly a ray of sunshine so I’m gonna need all the support I can if I’m going to do this.

Of course, no answer was given so I sighed and continued

- At least I have Olive, she’s taking good care of me and I’m doing the same for her. We both miss you.

- Ready kid?

I jumped on the spot, instantly putting away the handle and staring at John who had already finished dressing and was standing right beside me.

He had an Ivory white cape on top of his armor which was exactly like mine, apart from the color of course, but the thing that was really impressive was hanging from the side of his waist. A beautiful moss-green sheath held a short sword pretty similar to the one I had, but the handle was made out of some kind of smoothened wood, with what I assumed was a varnish of some sort because the brown color was bright as if it had a light inside of it. The handle was carved in a way so that it looked as if a wooden snake was wrapped around it, and where the blade started, the jaws of the snake opened, almost as if the blade came from inside the animal. It was a complete work of art.

- If that scares you then you should quit while you can

- I was too concentrated on something else, that’s all!

- What was that thing you had in your hands?

- What about the ‘no personal questions’ thing?

- Just answer the question kid

- Just a gift from my mother. Something she gave me a while ago.

- Hmm… - He was watching me with suspicious eyes, but the melancholy of my voice probably surprised him because he didn’t push any further.

- If you say so, you better leave it here if you don't want to lose it

- Yeah I was planning on doing that

- Then do it and let’s go, we don’t have all day

Putting the bag back on the locker, I closed it, saved the key on the same pocket and followed John out of the room.

- Today we have a quiet neighborhood, so things are gonna be easy.

- That’s good

- Maybe…

What was this guy’s deal? Was he always this cranky? I guess I’ll find out at some point.

The day passed by pretty slow since all we did was walk around a residential neighborhood for a couple of hours, get back to the HQs, make a report about what we did and if we found or saw something unusual, which we didn’t, and then we waited there until our shift was over in case they needed us for something. Once the clock struck 6 p.m. John gave me a sheet with our shifts for the week and told me that I could go home, but before he could brush me off I stopped him with a question.

- Sorry but can I ask you something before you go?

The agent sighed loudly pinching the bridge of his nose, but turned around and answered

- What is it kid?

- Where is the training room?

- Training? You should go home and rest, don’t waste your time and energy

- First of all, is not wasting if it’s time well spent, and second, all we did was walk around, and I suspect there will be a lot more walking in our schedule so I have more than enough energy.

- Okay okay I get it you are so young and powerful. Jeez, you kids are annoying. The training room is on the west side of the building and we are currently on the south wing. Can you get there on your own with that information?

- Of course, I’m not that dumb

- We’ll see about that

- Yeah yeah whatever, thanks sir. See you tomorrow then.

He didn’t answer as he walked out of the building, disappearing behind a door

I wandered for 10 minutes or so, making a stop at the locker room to grab my things and leave my armor and sword (since it wasn’t needed for practice because you had to use wooden swords for security), until I found a big double door with a ‘Training Room/GYM’ sign. I was about to push the doors when I heard noise coming from the inside, so I hesitated for a moment, wondering who could be training after their shift, and when I finally decided to enter I was gladly surprised to see that the only other person inside the room was no other than Patricia, the girl from the trials.

She didn’t notice me at first because she was too focused on her target, which was a wooden dummy covered with some kind of foam so the hits would feel more natural, and they wouldn’t bounce back, possibly hurting your wrist. What caught my attention weren’t the dummies tho, but Pat and her weapon.

She was moving really, really fast, thrusting and slicing with her thin weapon two or three times before jumping back or sidestepping and invisible attack. She repeated this sequence of movements changing the order and direction of her attacks, and also the direction of the ‘enemy’s’ counter.

- So she was a fencer after all

I was talking to myself, but I didn’t realize that, while watching her train I had been unconsciously walking towards her, and now was now close enough for her to hear me, so, she turned in my direction and caught me staring at her.

It seemed that she got really distracted because her ankles got twisted with each other which made her trip backwards and, since it was all to sudden, she didn’t had the time to react. I tried to reach her myself but I wasn’t fast enough so when I tried to grab her hand, it slipped from between my fingers and all I could do was watch as her butt hit the floor, followed by her back and lastly her head.

I knelt at her side, worried that she might had hit her head to hard, but when I was going to ask if she was okay, she got up still seated on the same spot of her landing, and rubbing the back of her head she said

- I’m good, don’t worry

- Phew, thank God, you hit yourself hard.

- I wonder whose fault it was… It’s okay, I just got really surprised

- Sorry for that, I was actually amazed by your speed

It seemed that she wasn’t only surprised, but embarrassed too, because her face was red as a tomato, and she was avoiding eye contact.

- It wasn’t that great tho – she humbly said

- Yeah, you are right, it wasn’t

- You are annoying, anyone ever told you that?

- That's the third time I hear it… Today

- Damn, so your guy is actually difficult, huh?

- How do you know that?

- I talked a lot with my tutor and she told me that John is a bit troubled, but that he has a lot to teach, if you know how to get to him.

- ‘A bit’ is an underestimation

- Come ooooon, it can’t be that bad

- Oh, wanna trade tutors then?

- No thanks, agent Violet is amazing

- Yeah, she is. She totally ruined me during the test

- She said that you actually gave her some trouble

I smiled hearing that, and Pat seemed to notice because her expression turned into a mischievous grin, as if she were taunting me. Instead of getting annoyed, I turned the conversation around without losing my temper:

- So you asked her about me? Are you perhaps interested?

- Pff, you wish. I just asked about every trainee and how their tests had been.

- You are breaking my heart – I said as ironically as possible, and her response didn’t stay behind

- Not the first one, not the last one

A second of silence passed and the both of us burst up laughing.

We laughed for a solid 30 seconds and gradually stopped, realizing that we had been on the floor since the beginning of our conversation. I felt embarrassed, because I wasn’t good when it came to women in general, so before she could notice my face starting to get red, I stood up and offered her a hand, which she gladly accepted.

Once we were both back on our feet, I asked her the question that had come to mind when I first saw her weapon.

- Since when do you practice with a rapier?

- After I finished high school my parents hired a private tutor for me, who taught me the basics with a short sword, but I wasn’t too good with it, so he decided to change the strategy and had me try different weapons until I could find one I was comfortable with, but nothing seemed to work. That was until I tried out a rapier for the first time. It felt completely different from the short sword, the double handed sword or the daggers, it felt like… like…

- Like an extension of your body?

- Exactly! It felt just like that

- Yeah, I know the feeling

- I started practicing with the rapier and I got better at an incredible rate, and even got better with the short sword as a consequence. I knew I had to keep training with the short sword because I’d had to use it until rank 3, so my teacher divided the training on two parts, one with each weapon. Where was I going with this?

- How long have you been using a rapier…?

- Oh yeah! I think is safe to say that I’ve been using it for two years now, give or take

- That’s a lot of time, no wonder you are so fast and precise with it

- Is actually not that great, you should have seen agent Violet. She was the one that told me to do that little exercise you just saw. When she did it, I could barely keep up.

I got frustrated all of a sudden knowing that Violet had beat me without using her best weapon. She was actually stronger than I thought and I had a lot of work to do if I wanted to come even remotely close to that level

- Is everything okay?

It seemed that I had been wondering too intensely because when I got back to reality, Pat was looking at me with a confused face, her big eyes totally stuck on mine.

- Yeah, just wondering a bit… Sorry, what were you saying?

- I was asking you about your training

- Oh, I started training when I was eleven, but it was all self-taught since I was too young for a tutor, and my mother didn’t know about it so that’s all I could do.

- ELEVEN?! Holy shit, you are a phreak

- Thank you for such beautiful words

- It was in a good way, I wish I had that dedication and force of will

- It isn’t that great, it took me almost two years to learn the basics, so you could say I’m rather dumb

- Still, you were only a kid! – She said shocked by the fact that I'd started training at such ayoung age – so you have been training for what, nine or ten years now?

- Do I actually look 20 to you?

- Aren’t we all the trainees that age?

- I’m actually eighteen so I’ve been training for almost eight years now.

- Eightee…! You are a monster

- Didn´t you hea Agent Ramos when he mentioned it on the ceremony? 

- Oh... You are right, sorry about that, I was actually really nervous so I barely paid any attention

- Yeah, I can relate, it was pretty scary

I noticed that more than fifteen minutes had passed since I entered the training room and interrupted Pat and I didn’t want to waste her time anymore so I started turning away while saying:

- Sorry for stealing your time, I won’t entertain you any longer so please, go on with your training.

I was already starting to walk away when she grabbed me by my wrist and almost shouted

- Wait! Can I ask you something?

- Sure, go on – I responded a bit confused about what she might want from me

- Since you have been practicing alone all those years, and I’m used to practice with someone, what would you say if we do a little sparring session?

- Hmm… That’s actually a good idea. I accept your offer Miss Pat.

- Then let’s do it, Mr. Theo