Chương 35: Day Thirty-Five

Dear Diary, Spent most of my In School Suspension yesterday reading from my copy of 'Law and Custom of Heroic'. Nothing really jumped out at me, but I learned a bit about traffic and commerce laws; either might come in handy at some point, I suppose. This morning when I opened my door Marie stood right behind Saffron, who had knocked. Other than rolling her eyes at my nudity, Saffron just walked away saying, "see you at breakfast."

Marie didn't say anything as I handed her my plates from yesterday, but when I asked, "Can you bring a bath by this evening after dinner?" she smiled her creepy all-fangs smile at me and nodded. With no interruptions today, and yesterday's enlightenment about the Marshall using some kind of illusion to literally be in two places at once, I spent every second until he stood up shoveling food into my maw.

Saffron and Angel shot me concerned looks as his plate got emptier and emptier, but I shook my head and they followed my lead, albeit with more 'eating at a reasonable, consistent pace' and less 'consume mass quantities', but still. Larry and his cronies actually got up before us, but their casual pace let us sprint past them and get to the Practice Yard first. Marshall duBois spoiled his glare at me by quirking one lip up in a crooked smile. Apparently he realized I'd caught on to his shenanigans.

I'm not judging, by the way. I'm all about the shenanigans, if you hadn't guessed by now, but I'm not going to buy into somebody else's shenanigans unless I can see a way to profit from it. Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. So once Larry and the Losers got their slow asses in place, the Marshall called out, "congratulations, Cadets.

Enough of you have learned the basics of the Stabilize spell that I'm going to start teaching you some actual combat techniques as opposed to more small unit tactics practice." Larry displayed his impressively low IQ by choosing to interrupt the Marshall by calling out, "finally, sparring!" while glaring at me. The Marshall practically teleported to stand in front of Lancaster, looming over him as he shouted into his face, "did you think I'd finished talking, Cadet?! Front leaning rest position, Lancaster!"

Apparently Lancaster knew that much, and didn't have the intestinal fortitude to stand up to the Marshall, so he dropped into position to start doing pushups.

"Despite some overeager Cadet's deepest wishes, we will not begin with sparring today. Today we'll be studying basic unarmed combat. How to throw a punch, how and when to kick or grapple, and most importantly how to take a hit or a fall." We spent the rest of the day doing just that, starting with 'how to make a fist'. I never really thought about it, but seeing how many of the non-Camden kids had no idea how to punch someone without breaking their own hands was amusing as hell.