5 years ago…
"Wake up you useless ballerinas!" Doris yelled into the barracks as she kicked a hole in the wall. The girls moaned as they got to their feet. Each and every one of them had short messy bed hair. "I don't want to hear that! You third years should have awoken with the sun. Your elephants are up and waiting for you to take them to the watering hole." Doris looked around the barracks and noticed an empty bed. She punched a hole in the wall. "Where is she?"
The girls pointed at the window.
"Come on Hipp!" A young girl with the same short messy coarse hair pulled on the trunk of a small elephant. The Elephants' eyes crossed as a little bit of water dribbled from its trunk. They had reached the base of the Tunnel. It was called a tunnel because the mountain that once stood there had caved in on itself leaving a hole in the center like a dormant volcano. The Quake opened a hole in the middle that was so deep you couldn't see the bottom.
"Right here." The girl pointed down at a collection of slow growing flowers. The Elephant scrunched up her face into a smirk and took a step back shaking her head.
"Come on. We've come all this way." The elephant let out a wheeze and a little water squirted out. "Hipp? What are you doing?" The elephant took a few more steps backwards. The young girl rushed around behind her and pushed against the backside of the elephant. The girl pushed and shoved but the elephant didn't move an inch. Suddenly a thought occurred to the girl, and she giggled. "Hey Hipp, did you know that butts are ticklish?"
The girl squished and squeezed at the elephants' wrinkly butt from top to bottom. Hipp contorted her face into every weird face she could muster in an effort to avoid shooting the water out. Hipp flappered her ears as she heard a fly buzzing around her ears. Then it turned into a whooshing sound that sounded like..Slam!
Hipp let loose of the gallons of slimy snot water she was storing in her trunk all over Doris. "Bliperilla!"
Bliperilla stuck her head out from around Hipps butt. "Awe girl, not a drop on the flowers."
Doris dragged Bliperilla through the tunnels of the mountain by her elbow. "Bliperilla, you know you're not supposed to go outside on your own. Third years are supposed to always stay with their unit. Why would you abandon them?"
"I tried to get them up, but the sun wasn't up." Bliperilla murmured.
"What?"
"That's what I said. It was still dark of course, so the sun wasn't up yet."
"There is no excuse for you to be out of bed early. You get up when the sun comes up and you wait for your instructor to come and get you for your training."
They stormed through the doors of the training barracks. Bliperilla pulled her arm away. "When I get up late you say I'm supposed to get up earlier. With the Sun! If I'm tired you say we must clean before I can go to bed but if I stay up late, you say I have to hurry up and go to bed."
Bliperilla jumped through the window out of the Tunnel and slid down the side of the mountain. She could hear Doris screaming that she was going to tell her mom. She didn't care. If she stayed there another moment, she was just going to make things worse. She had to go and see Deinomache the Terrible.
She had no clue why, because she was awesome. She was different from everyone in the tunnels, she was funny and free. She was the only person in the military that didn't have to live in the tunnels. She lived on the planes and looked after the herd of elephants.
She ran up to Hipp and hopped on her back. "Let's go to Dino!"
Hipp knew exactly where to go. She stomped through the dry jungle until she found a little hut made of clay with a straw thatched roof. It sat belowthe low hanging branches of a near by acacia tree. The hut sat next to a vast clear water spring between the Areto Tunnels. Hundreds of elephants and calves were wading and playing in the water.
Dino was sitting on the side of the hut with her hair braided into one ponytail, sipping a cup of coffee out of a burnt orange clay mug. Her skin was bronze, and her shoulders were round. She had won the position to be the shepherd of the herd of elephants that the warriors took into battle with those same arms. The shepherd was required to wrestle an elephant into submission. She was midwife to every calf since Bliperilla was born but had no children of her own. All the other warriors had children in the tunnels being trained but she said if she did, they would just be a distraction.
None of the warriors had husbands, there was just no need. "Men just want to fight over women, and women want things to get done." Was the motto of the women in the North Slomia cities.
"Blipp? What are you doing out here so early, aren't you supposed to be training?" Dino put her book down. Bliperilla was stampeding her way riding atop Hipp.
Hipp slowed down to a stop just in front of Dino. "Doris is being hypocritical again."
"Hypocritical?" Dino looked over to Hipp. "And you say you're not learning anything."
"Yes! She tells me to get up early but then when I'm up she says its too early. I don't know what to do, Dino." Blipp whined and stormed into the hut.
Dino patted Hipp on the head. She felt around her mouth. "Nope no tusks yet, but you're getting big. You can go into the lake with the rest of the heard. I think your mom and the other calves are in there as well." Hipp jumped up onto her hind legs and stormed off clumsily.
Dino walked in through the beaded door strings and Bliperilla was sprawled out on the couch. Bliperilla raised one eye at the sound of the rattling but didn't move her feet which were kicked up covering the other side of the couch. "There's still a little bit of coffee in the pot, want some?"
"Sure."
Dino walked over to the kitchen and grabbed another mug from the shelf above the sink. "So, what's going on in the tunnels?"
"Nothing we're still training. We haven't been stationed yet with the Peace Corps. Anywhere yet. I just want to get out of here and see new things. I can't wait to be deployed. I've already learned everything. Its just the same drills over and over. Then Glow control and Armor training then reading Slomia war aid history. Hearing of the Divorce War. Then we go to sleep and do it again and take tests and never a moment, to be. To just hang out and relax. No relaxing, just forever watchful." She placed her fist to her chest.
Dino did the same. "Forever Watchful. Well, we are to watch the world from the tunnels."
"So, what! I don't want to do it. I don't even want to be deployed."
"What? But you just said."
"Ahh Dino! Can't you tell? I mean I want to leave here and go and explore the world. Isn't it obvious. I want to go on an adventure. Shirk my responsibilities. I want my spirit to be the only thing I follow into the unknown. I want to live wild from city to city with only my next meal in mind, sleeping wherever I'm most tired."
"Obviously." Dino handed Blipp a cup of coffee and moved her legs away from the couch and took a seat. "Then why don't you?"
"Right!"
"What about your mother, won't she be mad at you?"
"I should just pack up and go. Right now!"
"Won't she be disappointed your not going to, ya know?"
"I'll sneak back into the tunnels making a big distraction and when they're trying to figure out what I'm doing, I'll grab my stuff and burst through a wall. Then I'll become a pirate!"
"That doesn't sound very stealthy."
"Thanks Dino! You always have the best plans."
The halls of the fourth tunnel were quiet. The girls were in class studying history. After Bliperilla had run away they had to suffer the foul mood or Doris. There was no good side to Doris, but she was better to be around with Bliperilla. She was always complaining, taking on all of Doris' bad attitude. Without Bliperilla she was extra agitated and unreasonable with everyone.
"Quiet!" Doris stomped into the classroom. "Has anyone found Bliperilla yet?"
"No, we didn't get a chance because after she ran away you told us to get ready for Glow shield training." One of the girls said.
"Yeah, then after that we had to chicken race. And now we're in class." Another girl admitted fearfully.
"That shouldn't have been a problem. You should have had multiple times to sneak away!" Doris demanded.
"But you told us no sneaking away to get Blipp last week, when she ran away, and we snuck out to go and get her."
Doris glared at the classroom of frightened girls. "Because she is not here you will have a pop quiz on the women who saved the Divorce War on the third day."
"But we already had a pop quiz on the third day of the Divorce War." The other girls moaned in agreement. She continued. "It is called the Rehearsal Dinner and its when the Twelve Watchers rescued Pentheselia after she had been captured during battle."
"Then on the fourth day when she killed the Ring Bear."
"Ahh!" The girls moaned.
"Okay let us begin." Doris stopped and looked around.
"Doris!"
"That damned girl." Doris raced out of the room and into the halls. "Bliperilla!" The class followed behind her.
"Bliperilla! Bliperilla! Blippperrrrriiiiiillaaaaaahh!!!" Doris stopped at the edge of the rail and 8 floors down standing in the entrance of the hall was Bliperilla.
"I'm going to create a distraction and grab all my things and run away. I call it, Operation: Extra Sneaky!"
More girls with the same uniforms on and short hair rushed from their classrooms. The instructors lead the way with their long-braided hair.
"It's her." A first-year girl said to her friends. "It's that girl."
An instructor crossed her arms and shook her head. "What is she up to now?"
"Her mother is going to be furious with Doris if she runs away." Another instructor pointed out as they followed the throng of students.
The instructors followed close behind. "Andromache should have let me be her instructor."
"Im new and I would have done a better job than Doris." The other instructor said loud enough for Doris to hear.
"Yeah, she is and will always be the most confusing instructor." The other instructor whispered loudly.
Doris turned beet red. "Bliperilla if you don't get up here and take a seat, I will come down there and make you!"
"Never, you stupid bull head." Bliperilla stuck her tongue out and ran into the halls towards the stairs.
Doris jumped over the railing and fitted herself head to toe with a full body Orange Glow armor by the time she crashed into the bottom floor.
Bliperilla looked back and Doris was already hot on her tail. "No problem I'll just make a door here." She placed her Glow armored boots on and kicked a hole in one of the nearby classrooms.
"Bliperilla!" Doris said aghast. "These rooms were created hundreds of years ago and have stood watchfully for us ever since." Doris kicked open another hole and chased after her. But once she got inside of the classroom Bliperilla was bursting through the ceiling into the above classroom. "You're demolishing the tunnels!" Doris did the same creating another hole in the ceiling, but Bliperilla was already gone and kicking in a hole to another classroom.
They kicked walls open and burst through ceilings all the way to the top floor where the barracks were. Bliperilla had but just a few moments to pack her stuff, when Doris caught up with her.
"You have completely demolished the tunnels. I can't believe one of my students would do such a thing. You are reckless and inconsiderate just as I always expected. I have put so much effort into teaching those traits out of you. To prepare you for the burdens that lie ahead of you."
"Doris, I have always wanted to walk out the door the moment I learned to walk. This place is suffocating my lust for adventure, and I can't take it anymore. I tried to topple this place to the ground, but I failed, today." Doris crunched her teeth. Bliperilla raised her fist. "I will get strong enough to destroy these tunnels with my armored fist one day. Until then I will unexpectedly and totally surprisingly burst through the top of this tunnel in an exceptionally glamorous fashion."
"I wont let you!" Bliperilla jumped up before Doris could grab her leg and glamorously burst through the side of the top most level of the tunnel showering Doris with flowers.
"That was glamorous." Doris smirked as the flower pedals rained down on her. "Oh no. I have to tell Andromache." She Jumped through the tunnel wall in the opposite direction creating a new hole.