After the captain briskly walks off the bridge people start dispersing, however most of them maintain a long, confused glare towards me. A voice shouts of from among the rumbling crowd, "Hey!, are you really on the Council?"
"Yes, I really am on the Supreme Council, and from this day forth I will be your representative, so please feel free to come and talk to me at any time."
"How are you on the council? You're a student like the rest of us, right? No student has ever been on the Council!" The rest of the crowd starts to agree with him and started shouting the same questions.
"Well after my father, Elias, disappeared in that incident on the mainland the Supreme Council said I was suppose to replace him on the Council." The crowd goes silent.
"Wait, your father is Elias Degray, so that means your Reiner Degray!?" Another person shouts out. Some people is the crowd gasped in shock.
"Ya, my name is Reiner Degray. What is so important about it?"
The students around me break into separate conversations. I can hear one of the students behind me speaking," Well, I guess that makes sense that he is on the Council. I mean, I've never seen him myself, but if he's the same person who is on the top of the board for combat. That's the number one fighter in school standing right there."
One of the people in his group responds to him, "I've never seen him before either. Did he go to school? I only ever knew the name that was on the board."
"In any case, it's getting late. I would appreciate it if you would all head back to your rooms and get some sleep in preparation for tomorrow."
The students begin to disperse but the conversations continue as they walk down the hall. I also begin making my way back to my room. After returning, I change into my sleeping clothes, get into my bed, and fall asleep.
Bright lights, loud noises, pulsating images, confusing to understand and no real meaning. The color red grows ever more evident in these images. I'm talking?
"Where are we going father?" Where is this? Where am I?
"We're going to meet an old friend of mine, Reiner."
I hear the alarm go off. What was that? A dream? A nightmare? A memory? A loud knock starts coming from the door. Who is it?
"Just a minute!" I yell out to the person behind the door. After getting dressed I open the door to find Tom standing there in the new students uniform. It is a blazer that extends halfway down the leg with a tall collar that reaches the top of the neck. A mix of dark black and red covers the uniform and the symbol for the station is sewed on the uniform over the heart. Underneath the blazer is a gray shirt with matching gray pants.
"Hey Reiner you ready for class? Wait, that's the uniform from last night. Why are you wearing that for school?"
"I have to wear this uniform the Council gave me. They said to wear this and only this when I'm in school and out of school as well."
"It's really cool looking, wish I could have one like it. Anyways, we need to get on our way to class or we'll be late."
As we start on our way Tom starts talking to me, "Reiner, why did no one know who you were back in the Cafeteria? I never saw you at the school either."
"When we were back at the old school I took my classes in the reverse, so I never had classes with any of you."
"What!? Why did you have classes in the reverse?"
"I don't know. The Council just said that I was to take my classes like that in order to not interact with any of you."
"That's messed up. I wonder why they did that? Were you all alone during those classes?"
"Well, except for the instructors, yeah there were no other students in the classes."
"Weren't you lonely at all?" A concerned face comes over Tom's face. I give no response. Lonely? I wasn't lonely. Was I? The silence continues as we walk. Walking down this seemingly endless hall of repetition we finally spot the door that leads to the class section of the station.
"Reiner, what class are you in? I'm in class B."
"I'm in Class A."
"Of course you--" The comm system turns on cutting Tom off mid-sentence.
"At this time, all students should be in their respective classrooms. If you are not yet there please make your way to you class quickly. That is all."
"Crap, I'm gonna be late for my class is down the hall more. See you Reiner!" He starts running down the hall to get to his class.
I turn towards my class door and enter my id into the console. My first time having a class with other people. I wonder what it will be like? The door opens and after walking in I begin scouting the room to see who is in it. The class is set up in 6 rows of long tables that stretch from one side of the room to the other. Chairs are set up along the tables and in front of the chairs on the desks are computer screens for class.There was a space in the front of the room for the instructor to stand and a large electronic board that they could use to write on. On the other side of the class from the door is a large window that still has a view of Earth. Looking around I see Anna sitting near the back of the class and Sam sitting in the front of the class. I see, these classes must be ranked not only off of our academic skills but also our fighting ability, which explains why I am in class A, but why would that matter up here? It's not like we're going to be fighting anyone. I look around for the seat with my id on it. Ah here's 72993190. Front of the classroom. The teacher walks in and all the students in the class take their seats.
"Ok guys I'm your Instructor, Jorge. You have been chosen as the top students on this station, which means we will be expecting a lot from you. Your class will be going through more rigorous courses than the rest of the classes and will have harsher training. This is because some of you will be selected to go down to the planet when we first arrive in order to scout out the surroundings, so we need all of you to be in tip top shape by then. I need you guys to start by logging in to the computers in front of you using your ids and access the file called Day One."
The class continues for some time as the instructor makes sure that we were taught everything we were suppose to have been at Survivors' School.
After academics, the teacher turns towards the rest of the class. "Ok, we're going to start training now. I want everyone to step outside the class and line up." Everyone steps outside of the classroom and lines up. I take the front of the line and the instructor steps in front of me. "You will now be running to the training room. It is a distance of 7 miles from here, and you have 30 minutes to get there or you will have to go through extra training exercises."
Some of the students then take off running down the hall at full speed, and others stay where they are because they don't know where to go. I stay and prepare to gather the remaining students to lead them there together, but before I can the instructor begins talking to me.
"Reiner, what are you waiting for? I know you are familiar with the layout of the station better than any of the students here."
"I was going to gather the students together and lead them there."
"Reiner, this is no time to be worrying about the other students. Just get going." I decided to listen to him, but as I go I make eye contact with some of the remaining students to signal them to follow me. I take off running and look behind to see who is following me but no one is there. Did I go to fast for them or something? Ridiculous, I'm not even running that fast. I walk back to the last hall and there I see the people trying to catch up to me. "Reiner!, get going now!" the instructor says in a furious voice. I once again take off but this time at full speed. Along the way I pass by Anna and give her a small nod as to say hello, and as I passed Sam I try to do the same thing but she is intensely focused on the ground in front of her and doesn't see me.
It takes me about 20 minutes to reach the training hall, and ,surprisingly, even though I am one of the last to take off I am the first to arrive. Eventually Sam shows up around the 28 minute mark and then the instructor walks in at the 30 minute mark. He takes a position near the door to watch the rest of the students that didn't make it in time to walk in, and as they do tell them to start doing training while he waits for the last of the students. Anna, who entered after the 30 minute mark as well, comes up to me.
"Reiner, how long did it take you to get here?
"I don't know, maybe 20 minutes."
"That's insane! It took the next fastest student 28 minutes to get here," because she was breathing heavily, I could barely make out the words she was saying.
"Isn't that a normal time for something like this? I've always run this fast."
"No Reiner, it isn't normal. You're freakishly fast."
"What about Sam, is she "freakishly" fast as well?"
"I wouldn't say that. I mean, she is really fast, but nowhere compared to you." Sam must have heard her name because she starts walking over to us.
"Did I hear my name over here?" Sam says as she walks towards us.
Anna turns to respond to her, "I was just telling Reiner how fast he is, even compared to you."
"Reiner, how fast did you finish? I thought I was the first one here." She must not have seen me because I was out people's line of sight from the door.
"I got here in 20 minutes or so?" I answer not knowing myself. Sam's face reveals just how flustered she is now.
"What? How is that possible? That's like a 2.8 minute mile! How do you run so fast?"
"I don't know, I just do I guess." Anna and Sam look at each other in amazement and confusion. The instructor walks over to me after a few seconds had passed.
"Reiner, you just set the new record for making it here from the class. This test was suppose to have no one pass, but not only you passed, so did Sam. Frankly, I'm astounded," the teacher said with a look of amazement. He patted me on the shoulder and looks around at the rest of the class.
Now recovered from the run, I look around at the training room.
A sign hangs from the doorway saying Training Room A. So, each class gets their own personal training room. Must be because we do separate training exercises and we would just interfere with each other. Looking around some more I notice the different training tools scattered around the room. In the center there is a large flat space that is used as the arena for student duels. On one side of the wall swords and knives of all variations line the wall, and on the opposite side guns that look rather advanced are hung up.
The instructor moves toward the middle of the room to address us. "Now that we are all here we will begin training. First, let's divide up into two groups and have one group stand over by the wall with the swords and one group by the guns. I want Reiner to lead one of them and have Anna lead the other. Anna and Reiner, I want each of you to teach your groups whatever you want today."
Anna and I move aside as the instructor begins assigning students to each of our groups by alternating between which team each student is assigned to. Once both Anna and I have full teams we move to our respective sides.
Once I reach the corner I turn towards my team and begin to address them, "Since we never did any formal introductions in the class I'll introduce myself now. My name is Reiner and I have been put in charge of the team because of my skills in fighting. Today we will be going over how to disarm someone coming at you with a sword or knife when you have no weapon yourself. These skills should have been taught to you at the Survivor's School back on Earth, but for later training exercises I need to make sure you all know how to do this. I want the left half of this team to go to the wall and grab a sword or knife, whatever you want, and the right side of the group to move towards the arena."
The left side of the group then goes and grabs some weapons from the wall while the right side starts moving towards the arena. After they grab their weapons from the wall, they return to the original place and look to me for more instructions.
"I want someone with a weapon to match up with someone who doesn't have one, then line up starting next to Sam over there."
The students match up with their partners and start lining up next to Sam in two lines with one line being those with weapons and those without. "We are going to start with the basic disarming technique we all should have learned during the first couple of days at Survivors' School."
"Reiner, are you sure you don't want us to also pair up based off our class years?" A worried looking first year says to me.
I position myself to address everyone in my team. "I want all of you to hear this. It doesn't matter if you are a first year or a third year while I'm in charge. Some of you will have more experience than others, and to those who do have more experience it is your job to help those with less experience to get to your level. We are all in Class A, which means that some of us will be picked to go down to the surface and I want everyone here to be as ready as possible for that trip." I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Jorge is staring at me as I give a lecture to the students. I wonder why? "Let's continue with the training!"
The students once again face each other in preparation for the training. I begin to stroll down the line watching the students train until I reach Sam. Curious to see how good she really is, I move to watch her disarm her partner. As I reach her spot in the line her partner begins moving toward her posed to strike. She inches ever closer to Sam holding a sword that is about 2 feet long and is a steel black.
Now closing in on Sam she swings the sword but misses as Sam rolls to the left dodging as the sword hits the ground. A loud ringing sound reverberates throughout the hall. The other student twists her body trying to get back into position to strike at Sam again, but before she can, Sam rolls right in front of her and grabs her hands in a fast, twisting motion releasing her grip on the sword. The sword then falls to the ground and hits the hilt bouncing it back up until it hits the ground one final time. All of this happening within a matter of seconds, the students, who turned to watch Sam, were understandably shocked.
That was quick! I didn't expect her to be this good, but then again she is supposed to be one of the top fighters in the school.
"Good job Sam, I'm impressed."
"Thanks, Reiner. I'd love to try this against you sometime."
"Maybe another time Sam, today focus on training with your partner." She looks at me with an annoyed face. A couple of hours go by as we continued to practice more disarming techniques in different situations.
When there's only an hour left of class I once again address the students. "Ok, it's been 4 hours since we started this training. Now, I want those of you who have the weapons now to go put them back then get back over here." The students go and put the weapons back onto the racks then return to their positions. "Starting now, we will be doing a continuous run through the halls until there are only 10 minutes left of class, and at that time we will be back here." My team lets out a collective sigh and reluctantly starts to follow me as I begin to leave the hall. Before we leave, I head over to Anna who has been leading the second team in gun training and let her know what we're doing.
"Can my team join you on the run? I ran out of new exercises a while ago and we are just repeating the same things now."
"That shouldn't be a problem I guess. Should I take the lead of your team as well or do you want to just follow my team and go?"
Acceptingly, she tells me, "By all means take lead of my team. I am not cut out for this."
She turns to her team and tells them that they will be following my team and I for our last exercise. I direct the now combined teams into a single file line, tell them that we will use the crew in the halls as obstacles, and, after checking with the instructor, lead them out of the room and we start down the hallways.
About ten minutes in I look back and see that no one is that tired, so I figure I can up the pace a little, but while thinking about it, I thought of how they need to be ready for anything. The best way to get anyone to improve is through competition. What would work here as a competition? Oh!, I know!
As we continue running I turn towards the group and start running backwards. "We are now going to pick up the pace, and the last person back to the classroom has to clean the bathroom all by themselves!" All of the faces in the line turn to the same expression, confused and highly annoyed. I slow down to the end of the line and motivate the guy in back to try and do his best. It is obvious this person is more of the intellectual type because of the way he runs, so I stay with him a bit until Anna calls out to me.
"You're falling behind Reiner!, where's that speed we saw earlier!" She is near the front of the line along with Sam, so she has to yell at me. A challenge, huh? I did say competition was a great motivator after all. I catch up to Anna in a couple seconds and, annoyed by this, she attempts to run faster. Sam also follows her lead and attempts to run faster than both Anna and I. I play along for a little bit pretending to start breathing heavily and falling behind a little bit, and when I saw her face I knew she thought she was going to win. Well, can't let that happen, can I?
I begin whistling down the hall almost instantly passing Anna, Sam and the rest of the students in front of them. I kept running until I reached the door, then stopping right outside to wait for the rest of the students. The second runner reached the door and passed through followed by the rest of the line with Anna and Sam. Once the last person reached the door and got inside I finally walk in.
"What was that Reiner? You were in front of everyone else, so why did you wait?" Sam asks me in a rude tone.
"Well, I issued the challenge only to motivate you guys to try harder, so I am not going to punish someone for trying their hardest."
Now back in the classroom the instructor walks over and looks at me, "Good job Reiner, you did well today."
"Thanks."
"You too Anna."
I turn towards the instructor, "If we're done today," and once receiving his nod that we are done, "I'll be in the bathroom cleaning so if you need anything you'll know where I am." I exit the room and start working my way towards my quarters thinking about the people I saw in my class. Sam and Anna must be there because they're good fighters, but it's rather obvious for everyone else whether they're there for their intelligence or their combat abilities.
I reach my quarters and from inside my closet holding cleaning supplies I grab the stuff I need to clean the bathroom, incidentally it was already one of my jobs to clean the bathrooms. I head down the third floor hall towards the bathroom and look around at all the empty rooms to compare them to mine. The regular quarters consist of 2 beds, with one on each side of the room, and footlockers in front of each bed. One large light built into the ceiling of the room shines onto the metal floor and reflects back up. A large, shared closet stood in the back of the room in between the two beds for each of the students to put their clothes in. Other than that, there was no space for any other storage and there were no other facilities in the rooms. I can see why Anna is jealous of my room now.
I reach the bathroom on the third floor and notice that only one of the classes have returned from training so far. Oh I recognize that kid from the when I shuttled him up here. F class is already finished huh? I continue on into the bathroom and proceed with cleaning it. Once done I move down a floor and finish that one as well. After cleaning the third and second floor bathrooms I start cleaning the first floor bathroom when I begin to hear people coming back from class.
Crap, didn't finish fast enough! I try to hurry but before I can students begin walking in, so I turned around to leave even though I wasn't finished. I notice that a lot of the students that came in are A class students, and among them was the student who was last in line.
"Hey Reiner!" The student called me. I look towards the student. Her name is Cela. She is short, maybe 5 '3, with short, straight light brown hair and was pretty scrawny looking. It was obvious she wasn't a very good fighter, even though I am unable to say for sure because she was in Anna's group not mine. I remember that during regular class she was rather quiet and didn't answer many questions, nonetheless she was acting quite cherry now. "I wanted to say thank you for what you did today."
"What I did today? Oh, don't worry about it was nothing."
"That's not true. I know you're trying to motivate me to do better even though I suck at my physical activities. It is just nice to know that someone didn't give up on me like at the other school."
"What do you mean gave up on you?"
"Well, I couldn't keep up in the combat classes so the instructors found it a waste of time to even try and train me, which meant I was often left behind or forgotten about. Eventually people even forgot about me in regular classes to so I just stopped trying." A sad look appeared on her face.
"That's terrible, but you don't have to worry. As long as I am here I'll make sure you stay included in what we do." Now her face changes to one with joy on it.
"Quite the player, aren't you Reiner?" Tom says as he appears out of thin air.
"Shut up Tom or I'll make you clean the bathrooms from now on," I retort.
"Fine, fine, I give," he says jokingly.
"I'm finished with the bathrooms so I'm gonna head back to my room now and get some sleep."
"See you Reiner," Tom says.
I leave the bathroom and head back up the stairs to the third floor and enter my quarters. After turning on the lights I go the bathroom, take a shower, and get myself dressed for bed. I place myself into bed and try to get some sleep. I eventually drift off into sleep in the warm embrace of my blankets.
What? Where am I? Darkness all around me, no ground, nothing that I can see. Suddenly a large plain appears. One that consists of dirt, rubble, and rocks. Two figures are walking through the plain, one a young child and the other an old man, both faceless. What is this? Where is this? I've never seen this place before? Who are these people? I begin to hear the voices of the faceless people in the distance.
"We're almost there, not to long now."
"Where are we going dad, I'm tired," the faceless child says.
"We're going to see some old friends of ours. You probably just don't remember them, but they're good people."
"But father, you said we can't trust anyone other than each other."
"That's true son, but these people we can trust. I promise you."
The landscape begins to fade back into darkness then a blinding light appears. My eyes open to find myself back in my room. Who were those people? A father and a child. Why did I dream of them?