Chương 552: Day Five Hundred And Fifty

Dear Diary, Ever since Siobhan read me the riot act regarding the Cadets in my Combat, and for that matter Physical Training classes, I've been thinking about my Duty of Care for Cadets put under my direct supervision. If I were teaching Phys Ed in a normal school, even at the University level, I'd say I'm absolutely supposed to do everything I possibly can to keep them from getting hurt. Back at Eastside that almost might have made sense. Even in Camden during its worst days, not everybody got exposed to violence.

I mean, yeah, most of us, and all of us were sure it would happen at some point, but if you kept your head down and your mom didn't have a violent boyfriend and you didn't get caught up in some kind of gang violence or have a junkie craving a fix assault you because they thought you had enough pocket change to get them their fix, but still, I only wound up getting in like two fights, and only got beat up half a dozen times. Three of them were by cops, so those don't even really count.

I got a little off track there. My point is that back there, plenty of people never saw violence outside of a video game. No real question as to how much injury was acceptable in that situation; the answer is 'none'. But here and now is a whole 'nother situation. I'm not training a bunch of High School or College kids who most likely would go on to jobs in customer service somewhere. I'm training combatants. Not just, like, soldiers, but elite super soldier officers.

A normal soldier back where I'm from might never hear a weapon fired in anger. Like, even with the endless bullshit wars we kept getting pulled into in the Middle East, we had servicepersons stationed in the States or in Europe for their entire time in, who were probably in less danger on the daily than any kid in Camden. But Cadets? Cadets are gonna be Heroes eventually.

They're gonna wind up out on the sharp end, because everyplace not 'The Alliance' is the sharp end, and the whole business of Heroes is to keep the nastiest shit outside of their City. Or Cities plural now, because that's what the Alliance is all about. Letting each City have a border they don't need to guard. Which means either everyplace inside those areas is safer, or we can maybe expand those 'safe areas' a little. But that means that they're gonna wind up out on the raggedy edge.

Out where there's shit like Hole Spawn and Dragons and Undead and, not to put too fine a point on it, Dire Bears. That means that if I want to train them harder than anything they're gonna face, I'm gonna have to put them in situations in the Practice Yard where they can get hurt. Hopefully not injured too badly to fix, although with me being around to power any needed Healing up to and including Revive, that's not as much of a limitation as it seems.

But I think part of the whole idea of how Marshall duBois trained us, where we got the shit kicked out of us on the regular, either by each other or by the cold and unfeeling Laws of Physics when we tried to do dumb shit like break our fall to the pavers with our faces. None of us finished that training with a huge amount of fear of pain. Yeah, getting hurt hurt, but one trip to the Infirmary and all the pain went away.

So even a quiet, nice young woman like Bonnie could, without thinking about it, shove her hand into a Wyvern's mouth and grab its tongue. So, yeah, I don't want my Cadets getting hurt, I'm gonna try to train them as hard as I can to avoid it, and even harder to be tough enough to survive it, but if they do, they do, because of that whole Samurai thing; having zero fear of death is a huge force multiplier in combat.

Of course, I did not really expect the reactions of my team of six when I pointed out that the thing coming out of the cave at us was a Dire Bear. I won't say they responded like a well oiled machine, because they were in fact six well oiled killing machines who may or may not have worked together during their stay at the Academy. O'Brien leapt forward, drawing his blade, a big bastard of a hand and a half sword. He slammed the side of the thing into the bear's head before I think it really realized we were there.

Of course, not only did that alert it to our presence, it also did more along the lines of 'pissing it off' than 'seriously injuring it'. Like most things with eyes, the bear's instinct when something came flying toward them was to jerk back, and while I'm pretty sure he gave the bear a dentist's bill it would never forget, it wasn't anywhere near enough to kill the thing. Mackenzie had a pair of long fighting knives; almost short swords, really.

While O'Brien got its attention, she dashed around behind it and leapt on its back, plunging her knives into its back. It responded by roaring in O'Brien's face and pawing at her, pushing itself to its feet when it couldn't quite reach her. She pulled one dagger out like she'd intended to stab again, but she wound up plunging it back in and using them to cling to the thing's back.

It rammed itself backward into the hill its cave was in, and wondered if I'd have to do an emergency evac to deliver her to Sister Siobhan for some quality over quantity Reviving, but instead of the awful splurch I expected, the sound that came out was more of a crunch, and it didn't quite hit the hill. I glanced to one side to see Brown standing there, hands moving to Shape a Fire Bolt. It wasn't one of my overpowered wall melters, but it arrowed out and managed to nail the bear right between the legs.

Burning fur and scorched meat exploded outward, but as before, it wasn't so much a mortal wound as an infuriating one. Right about then the Air Shield they'd thrown collapsed, and Mackenzie screamed as the weight of the bear bore down on her. I think its own bone spurs were all that kept it from turning her into paste.

"It's Mana Resistant!" screamed Brown as they fired off another Fire Bolt. Of course, that got the thing's attention, and it slammed both paws down on O'Brien as the start of a charge. O'Brien had been halfway through trying to gut the thing, but managed to get his blade in the way of one of the oncoming paws. It skewered itself, smashed him flat to the ground, and screamed as it charged. Limping, but still coming right at Brown like an angry dump truck.

"You might want to move?" I called out, looking for a good way to end the thing with minimal bloodshed on our side. I really didn't want to hear Loki bitching at me about dying again. I don't think your students ought to die either, just to be clear. Me neither. Little busy. Brown stood their ground, firing off bolt after bolt into the thing's face as it charged across the dozens of feet between O'Brien on point and Brown, who'd been bringing up the rear with me.

"Filtration Ward," they said calmly. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

"Mana Resistant," I said just as calmly, Blending a little and stepping to the side.

"Oh, FUCK!" they screamed as it reared up. As it brought both forepaws down, blatantly ignoring the sword shoved through one paw, Brown dove toward it. Bold choice, but I kinda forgot that Cadets, not unlike a certain Champion who will remain nameless, tend to being brave to the point of stupid. They wound up underneath the thing as it tried to follow with its claws, and wound up slamming its own face into the ground before doing the world's clumsiest somersault.

"Caster down!" shouted Chloros, firing the crossbow she'd unlimbered at the bear's head, for a few precious seconds, wound up more or less motionless as it sorted itself out from its near auto-turtling.

"I've got them, focus on the bear!" I called out, stepping to Brown, grabbing them, and stepping to where O'Brien was woozily shoving himself to his feet.

"You good?" I asked as he managed to get upright, one forearm bent in a way that forearms aren't supposed to do.

"I'm good!" he shouted, but before he could charge in unarmed, I tossed him Brown. He caught them with his left arm, and I yanked his right arm more or less straight and slammed a Heal Injury into it. Sorry Ice Pop. For what, Tab... oh, dear sweet Canta be careful. Never am! I leapt to the thing's back as it righted itself, pulling out one of my rope darts as I did. I flung the dart around its neck, catching it and slotting it through the loop, gathering up as much of the rope as I could, and heaving.

Anything this big had to need a lot of air in a fight, I figured maybe I could strangle it. I maybe kinda sorta forgot its response to Mackenzie. It stood, pawing at me, then fell over backwards. I Co-Located away, the me on its back dropping, slamming the dart into the meat of its ass when the line went taut, then getting a face full of bear ass for my troubles. From my new perch in a treetop I saw Ryan pouring arrows into its gut.

Almost literally, as her rate of fire approached some dudes I'd seen with semiautomatic pistols back in the day, and while her arrows mostly punched into the big bastard all the way to the fletching, some losing themselves entirely, it didn't seem to be doing much other than exposing it to peritonitis, which given the number of perforations in its bowels would kill it hard in a few hours, but by then we would all be moving through that gut lining.

Still, she kept at it, loosing arrow after arrow into the thing, slowly moving sideways as it turned toward Chloros. Aetos stood between Chloros and the bear, a narrow bladed spear in his hands. The thing got back on its hind paws and trundled toward him, shaking its head as it did. I realized right then that Chloros' first shot had taken it right in the eye.

Impressive skull on the thing, what with the bolt not penetrating to its brain, but what remained of its eye looked like a sad party balloon, deflated and flopping around in the socket. Without depth perception, it overshot Aetos a little; much like Brown before him he dove forward, driving his spear into the thing's chest. It sank in, sliding between the bone plates layered over its ribs. It roared in pain and did the predictable thing, slamming itself down on the guy who'd just stabbed it.

The last I saw of Aetos he wasn't trying to protect himself, but keeping the spear upright and braced into the ground. That got me good and pissed off, because now I'd have to explain to Siobhan how one of my Cadets got splattered all over the ground. The me that had given the bear a very unwilling visual proctology exam hadn't died, just wished I had, because not only had my audiovisual input narrowed to bear rectum, my nose was still fully functional as well.

Worse, the whole 'Mana Resistant' was fucking with my ability to Translocate. That's when I remembered exactly where the Wyvern hadn't been Mana Resistant, not to mention how I'd demonstrated Mana Blade to the court back during my Court Martial.

"Everybody down!" the me in the tree screamed. Ryan dove sideways, while Chloros just dropped straight down onto her face after letting loose her second shot. Damn good shot with that crossbow, because the bear was now completely blind. Of course that didn't matter a second later, when I extruded a Mana Blade out of my forehead. A big one. I kept making it bigger until bits of it shot out of the fucker's eyes, and steam blew out its ears as its brain flash boiled.

Of course that put paid to the me in its ass, as apparently its last instinct before 'full bowel release' was 'sphincter clench'. Trust me, you do not want to be paralyzed from the neck down when a dump truck sized bear lets go of everything in its bowels right into your face. I debated not collapsing that me back to the rest, just on the off chance that the stench would follow me, but I'm not sure I'd let my worst enemy die like that. Okay, given that I may well be my own worst enemy, I didn't.

Tingles raced across my whole body as I collapsed that me back to the me in the tree, and I stepped down before I fell down.

"O'Brien! Ryan! Get that thing off Aetos! Chloros! Check on Brown and Mackenzie, and make sure there aren't more of those things in the cave!" I limped over and threw my weight behind rolling the bear off Aetos. When the three of us weren't quite enough to move it, even when I poured Mana into my muscles, I Blended a couple tentacles and yoinked. Turned out Aetos was far less smushed than I'd thought, pretty much for the same reason I hadn't been squashed.

Both of us are pretty much solid muscle and bone, and there was at least a foot of snow on the ground. Neither of us was in great shape, and he'd swallowed a couple teeth and broken his nose and all of his fingers, but it turned out that much like Ryan, he'd landed a kill shot on the bear, just not one that stopped it moving. Didn't find that out until I called Marie in to butcher the thing, though.

I'd had a momentary thought about letting the Cadets field dress it like they'd seen the hunters do with the moose, but then I realized that we didn't exactly have a redwood to hoist the thing up by, so Murder Mittens would have to butcher it in place like she'd done with the last one. Just as she arrived, Mackenzie came out of the cave and pronounced it empty.

Even a cursory look inside showed that it hadn't been more than a burrow for the bear; a single divot in the side of the hill, maybe the size of a one car garage, and it had just shoved itself in to get out of the snow. With the area theoretically clear, I called Siobhan in.

"Hey, Sister. I'll provide the Mana, but could you maybe take a look at the Cadets? If they've got the right Shapes, let them do the healing, too." She gave me a look.

"Good training." Then I remembered.

"Oh, shit, I think I might have fucked O'Brien's arm a little." She shook her head and reached a hand up to my cheek.

"Oh, my Hero. The field of battle is where Heal Injury is meant to be used. I'll see to your Cadets. Will you be bringing them home tonight then?" I shook my head in turn.

"Nope. We've still got to check the path back to the Homestead. Think we're gonna shelter in place in that cave there tomorrow though. The Cadets need some rest, and Murder Mittens can show them some more about butchering wild game."

"Uh, Champion?" I sighed, closed my eyes, counted to ten, then when nothing exploded or screamed or otherwise informed me that Murphy was not in fact done fucking me for the evening, turned to Chloros where she'd looked up from examining the Dire Bear's forepaws.

"Whatcha need, Cadet?"

"This thing isn't what did for that moose and the griffon. Claws are too small." Just like Murphy to leave a handy card telling me he'd be back to fuck me more later.