Chương 143: Chapter 142 – Proctor

Cole flipped through the training packet in front of him detailing the new batch of Kicker hopefuls while Morganstern leaned against the wall of the conference room with the slide clicker in her hands.

"Lot of recruits, here," said Cole.

"This is almost twice the number that was in my push."

"We decided to combine the next two pushes, since we're needing to up our footprint in Curahee anyway. More stones, more birds," said Morganstern.

"Training for the second got moved up, while the actual event for the first push slid to the right." Cole looked around at the other two proctors. Besides Morganstern and himself, they'd be assisting with the Curahee tryout in a few weeks. One was a speedster from Morganstern's party nicknamed Ketchup. The other, Arley, lost his team to the chaos following Deadlight's death. Two of its members went on Hiatus during the shakeup to the Department.

The three weeks since Deadlight's death had every bit of the effect Bricker had anticipated. The freshmen in the expanded push would barely be enough to replace the Kickers who had quit or taken a leave of absence. There were only so many attuned individuals, after all. Some were rescues, others were scouted through an outreach program or through a secret Bootcamp screening process that had apparently let Cole slip through without him ever being the wiser.

"Anyone we need to watch out for?" said Cole. Morganstern tilted her head.

"How do you mean?"

"When we did Curahee, Roxy seemed pretty convinced that some of the others couldn't be trusted and I should watch my back. Wondered if that was the case with this group at all." Morganstern snorted.

"Roxy has read The Hunger Games too many times. And, in point of fact, isn't most of that suss-ass gaggle on your team now? Blink aside, how sketchy did any of them turn out to be?"

"Touche," said Cole.

"If someone is too broken or psycho for Curahee, that gets caught during the training push. Usually. We've only had a couple cases of loot envy causing green-on-green since I've been lead proctor. Friendly fire does happen, but it's almost always unintentional. People get spooked in the woods, see something move, and open fire without a positive ID or a callout. Can I continue my brief, now?" Morganstern's teammate, Ketchup, snickered. Cole flashed him a sheepish grin.

"We're going to do this in two phases," said Morganstern.

"First, we proctors go in together as normal. We're all EL 15 plus, so there's only a few regenerating monsters in Curahee that actually pose a threat to us. We'll clear them, draw the rest away from the ridge, and then prep for the real thing." She clicked the slide forward showing several still images pulled from helmet cams. Cole recognized one of them as the old king in the courtyard of the outer castle.

There was also what looked like a six-headed wood ogre, a full-grown and nasty version of the scaled dogs that prowled the forest, and a twisted, armored knight on foot.

"These are all monsters that will ruin a tryout's day. They have relatively predictable regeneration rates, so they should all be up by now. If they are, we cull them. If not, we make sure the tryouts avoid their stomping grounds. We're not going to take any chances, so we go in as a team tomorrow, do some recon, and take them out if we find them." Using the laser in the remote, Morganstern pointed at the armored knight with the fungal growths turning one arm into a massive pulsing growth.

"Arley, take a peek in the gatehouse and see if the Castellan is active. I'll come with you and check the orchard for the old king." She switched to the upsized ogre.

"Ketchup, see if you can spot ol' Big Wood in the forest east of the river. He sometimes makes his way up to the silk forest. Lot of ground to cover but should be no problem for my favorite speedster."

"I thought I was your favorite speedster," joked Cole.

"You're not even a speedster, mister. You're a jumpster."

"Double-jumpster, now." Morgan's eyebrows went up.

"For real? Like, jump and jump again without landing?" Cole nodded.

"As of my last evolution." The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. Morgan shrugged her lips in a not bad gesture.

"And you're not a mage, right?"

"Kinetic energy manipulator," said Cole.

"Ok. Well, you might be needing that mobility against Bessie. She's the only one we don't have to look for. Once you're in her territory west of the river, she'll probably catch your scent and come looking for you with her posse. She's fast. And mean. Don't underestimate her or her breath attack. If you don't think you can take her on your own, fall back and either assist Ketchup or wait for someone to back you up. Curahee may be a Risk-Index 1 world but that's because we go in and cull the big threats.

These guys can still mess up a solo mid-level Kicker."

"Understood," said Cole and Ketchup. They looked at each other.

"Race to see who kills their elite first?" Ketchup asked.

"Doesn't seem fair if Bessie is going to come to me," said Cole.

"I'll take that action," said Morganstern.

"Five-hundred bucks says Ketchup beats Airborne to the punch."

"Same," said Ketchup.

"You're on," said Arley.

"I watched some of this dude's firefights from Hexighast. Either his ev path is bananas or that squid gun of his is busted in the best way." They all looked at Cole expectantly. Five hundred dollars used to be a massive amount for him. This bet would have been a huge deal if he was still in the Army, but as a DOR Kicker, this was almost friendly wager territory. He took a deep breath.

"Don't expect me to wuss out after talking big. I'll put my money where my mouth is. Five hundred says I tip Bessie before your Big Wood goes limp." Morganstern snorted.

"Hell yeah. I knew you were fun, Airborne." Arley clapped him on the back.

"You got this. But don't get killed." Ketchup reached out to seal the deal with a handshake, carving their bet into stone.

"All right, all right," said Morganstern. She advanced the slide deck again, showing a screen of two rows of seven faces.

"Enough bullshit. Back on task. These are the hopefuls. Nine are active service. Mostly Army, one Marine, and one Airman." She circled a pair of almost identical faces.

"These two are brothers, taken together and rescued together. They're smoke jumpers. That's woodland firefighters that parachute in to control fires. So they're not military, but they're fit as fuck and tough as nails. And probably a little crazy." She moved on.

"Akira, here, is JIRF auditing our tryout process for inter-agency cross-training. This last one, Wayland, already had his class when he was rescued. He was one of the six pulled to Kevlesh, so he's probably got a pretty fucked-up class." Ketchup winced.

"Is that bad?" asked Cole.

"Just be glad you didn't get classed during that crossover you had in Syria," said Arley.

"Unless you enjoy shit like having to suck bone marrow to restore charges. Kevlesh is currently merging with its own hell, and there's some cross-contamination with the Lewis Fields."

"He's the one to watch for Roxy's Hunger Games," said Morganstern, though her grin suggested she wasn't entirely serious.

"Noted," said Cole.

"So how do we divvy up the hopefuls?"

"Arley and I will be floating around the whole group. But you and Ketchup will each split the area at the river where you fought that Ram guy. You'll take west, Ketchup east." Morganstern clicked a couple slides ahead to an overhead view of the entire tryout area, comprised of a long valley with some impassible terrain to the west and a wide lake to the east. Cole hadn't seen this view of it before, but it really did make a perfect sandbox.

"The Curahee event starts twenty-four hours after we clear the area. You'll get a chance to meet the recruits before they rappel into the valley. No more isolated summer camp adventure, either. We'll have a dedicated aid station at the top of the ridge and a bird with a radio repeater in the air at all times. You see a flare, you assist, and you render them back to the washout camp." The slide deck switched to a white screen with a bold, black QUESTIONS in the center. Morganstern looked around.

As far as training went, it helped that Cole had already experienced it—not only as a trainee, but also once the wall between tryout and proctor got dropped after… Cole cleared his throat.

"What about Beast Cult?" Morganstern cracked her knuckles.

"We think it's probably unlikely. Me and Ketchup scouted a couple times and didn't see any. After you left last time…" Morganstern looked at the other two kickers.

"Blink made that hybrid knight vanish. She said she sent him home. Pretty lima charlie message, if you ask me. I won't call it overkill, but hopefully it fucked up the day of any assholes who happened to be near him."

"Still," said Cole.

"Still, standing orders apply. Withdraw, if possible. Report. I can sense dimensional magic, and we'll scrub the whole exercise if I get a whiff of it." Her face twisted.

"Though I wouldn't mind some playtime if I can avoid getting cursed again. I still owe those fuckers. Anything else?" No one raised their hands. Morgan made a shooing gesture. Ketchup and Arley scooted, but Morganstern stopped Cole with a hand on his chest.

"A minute, Airborne."

"Oooooh," cooed Ketchup, leaning back through the door.

"Someone's in trooouuuble," Morganstern kicked the door and Ketchup had to dodge back to avoid being hit in the face as it closed.

"Your boy Howie reached out, offered to be a proctor. I told him we were good this time. Then he offered to take me on a date, instead."

"No shit?" asked Cole.

"I never thought he actually would."

"Was he serious or just messing with me to be a creep?" Cole considered.

"Howie jokes a lot, but I don't think he'd joke about that. He ain't perfect, but he's a good guy." Morganstern raised an eyebrow.

"He does realize I'm like eight years older than him, right? And probably way too intense for that skinny cinnamon roll. Probably break him in half."

"I, uh," said Cole, scrambling for a way to put things delicately.

"I think that's kind of the point."

"No shit?" Morganstern looked to the side. A smile started to tug at the corner of her mouth.

"I think I could fuck with that." She shook her head.

"Alright, get out of here, Airborne. I'll see you on the pad tomorrow morning."