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Tactics 101

Hazzan was some kind of glutton for punishment. (Or maybe just a glutton.) Although she'd had a difficult time grasping some of the concepts in tactics the previous day, she was determined to make a decent go at the subject. After all, she didn't think Frossa nor Alifax was especially eager to try the classes in her stead, and they needed to become well-rounded.

That in mind, she made her way back to the bleachers for another day of military strategy. Hopefully the distracting influence of Keytar boy would be absent today!

Biting down on her lip, she once more set her quill against paper and tried to take detailed notes. Hopefully today it wouldn't be so much like trying to sift sand through her fingers. Hazzan knew that once she cracked the basics she would enjoy tactics - so could she just power through that today? Please?

Combat 101, Take 2

Nelgan was getting pretty relaxed when the instructor barked that they were going have a display match, and that two drones would demonstrate. Of course, he had to be called out to spar. Of course, another drone, that probably actually took this training seriously, was his sparring partner. The instructor looked at Nelgan expectantly, so he stepped forward, although rather hesitantly. Heck if he knew anything about real combat! He was trained against swarms of people, not professional sparring!

Well Nelgan, he thought to himself, either wimp out and probably be killed for being a disgusting waste of space, or be bruised a bit and get valuable training experience. Things would work out. Right? Right??

Nelgan turned to his sparring opponent, a grimace plastered on his face. Here goes nothing, he thought dryly.

(tag for Tiarana)

#6432C7]
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Combat 101

Frossa figured there was no harm in trying out the combat classes again. What were the chances of her getting two dreadfully boring lectures in a row? The highblood supposed she should have paid better attention to the schedules.... Frossa wondered if there were any classes she could take with either Hazzan or Alifax. There must have been some overlap in their interests, right?

Arriving at her selected class, Frossa was pleased to learn that they would indeed be using their weapons today. However, it wasn't on each other; instead they were practicing on several jelly like, brightly coloured mannequins. There were several adult trolls wandering about, giving pointers and barking orders to their charges. She was disappointed, but it soon melted away as Frossa learned how fun the flesh-like jelly was to bash around. Her bright face was splattered with a fine spray of red goo as she smashed her retracted, currently mace-like flail into a test dummy over and over. Turning the once torso-shaped figure into an unrecognizable pile of goo, she earned some strange stares before one of the militants approached her. The high blueblood offered to help Frossa strengthen her stance, which she supposed was alright. After chewing through a few more of the variously coloured gelatin dummies, Frossa was extremely satisfied with the results. Thanking her mentor politely with a toothy smile, the indigoblood left the combat lesson with a spring in her step. Maybe this wasn't so bad after all!

#6432C7]
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Navigation 101

The next night, Maihue was ready to go back and learn even more. She had memorized a lot of the stars, and decided she wanted to learn everything she could from this Navigation class. She got there as early as she could, and quickly sat down. She sat there quietly trying to stare ahead, but couldn't, and looked down at her paper. She once again heard the soldier in front speak, and started to jot down notes. Today they were going to learn about tracking. Tracking..? Maihue looked up and was puzzled. Was.. This going to be easy to memorize as well? Oh boy...

After taking a few notes, everyone went out to track some minor things. Like the location of a certain rock, and then everyone paired up and had to find one another after each turn. That wasn't fun for Maihue, and the other troll thought she was the strangest thing they'd ever seen... Well, at least that's what Maihue thought they thought of her.

Memorizing the stars was easy for Maihue. It took her awhile to realize that it was just more positioning and paying attention to the things around you and andddd paying attention to who you are tracking. Remember Maihue, that is important.

Navigation 101

Terbik was surprised she had been allowed to choose her training class at all. Ever since the recruiting tents had been set up she had been ordered and bossed around to help move that, clean up this, go fetch that, and whenever she'd had a break some troll always needed help getting somewhere. Things had finally settled down after a while, people became accustomed to the underground city, and her drone duties had been finished for the night. She didn't want to look like she was wasting time, though, so Terbik decided to sign up for Navigation.

It was something she was good at. She already knew most of the constellations, (she'd spent too many hours staring at them while she was supposed to be patrolling the city) and her focused eye was quick to pick up on patterns in tracking. Pretty soon, seeing that she was merely sitting at her desk and twiddling her writing implement, the drone was ordered by the trainer to help the trolls who were struggling.

Survival 101

It was a good thing that Talymn was only being a 'draft pick'. The duties and regime of the 'super soldier' were fast becoming a bigger pain than what he had previously thought. Between the mockery from his peers and the overall indifference from their superiors, the kid's spirits were at an all time low and his pent up frustration was getting near uncontrollable. And it had only been two bloody days! Still, he wasn't about to give up just yet.

Crouched down with his back to a bunker wall, Talymn steeled himself for his next move. He had decided to try his hand with the stealth course this time around and in-so-far, he felt he was doing a pretty solid run. His objective was to sneak through a dimly lit maze of walkways and locate a specific room without tripping alarms or alerting dummy guards. He had been through three dummy rooms so far, but no real consequence came of those blunders and he hoped his luck would continue as he released a quiet breath.

One eye on the shadows-
Protectin' his fellows-
From sun up to the moon on his back...

With a furtive glance, he crept out from his corner, keeping as close to the walls as possible while pretending he was one with the shadows that engulfed the hall. In the dim light, he was able to make out the outline of a door-handle at the other end. Upon closer inspection, there was nothing he could find that differentiated it from the previous three he had tried. As he was about to reach for it, his eyes spotted another glint of metal that revealed an air vent positioned to the right.

Sent the villains to Hades...
Hearts and Spades left waiting
A stallion in the sack

The gate came off easily enough and he found it was just barely big enough for him to crawl through. After a second of decision making, Talymn hoisted himself up into the crawl space, sputtering as an army of dust bunnies suddenly attacked his senses. Don't they clean e'er these things?! Trainin' exercise or not- THIS AIN'T COOL! Trying to suppress a sneeze, he crawled on, snorting every so often as the dust clung to him. Oh, Hell, this crap's in my hair now! Bloody-! With gritted teeth and waves of disgust washing over him, he continued on for another few feet until he finally he couldn't hold back the sneeze anymore. Which brought on another, followed by a terrible hacking cough that resonated through the vent shaft.

"Oh, screw this noise!" He snarled, slamming his fists down hard. "This ain't worth it! Not in the fu-aaugh!"

The vent shaft suddenly bolted out from underneath him, the metal creaking more until the whole segment he was trapped in came undone from ceiling, landing with a loud clang. Coughing, the kid crawled out with a wince, taking a look at his surroundings.

BZZZZZZZT!

Flinching at the buzzer, Talymn just gave another snarl as he sat up on his knees, patting away the persistent dust clumps. Lights flared and a speaker crackled to life somewhere, but he was too blinded and too angry to care about whatever message of failure he was going to be given.

"Congratulations on making it through the course despite how unorthodox it was."

"Yeh, an' you all can go choke on a bul-wait, what?"

"Please proceed through the exit." The speaker went dead.

It took Talymn far longer than it should have for the realisation to set in.

Featured lyrics: 'Man For All Seasons" by Robbie Williams

Survival 101, take 3.

Abrila was beginning to think that she enjoyed putting herself through pain and agony. A troll would think an experience like she had would turn one off of this particular class for good, but Abrila was still worried that she would miss something important that could screw her over later if she did not continue with the class. Survival was Abrila's man concern as of late, after all.

That night she found herself tackling the stealth course. Abrila didn't think she needed the training, but anything was better than the running course. It was easy for her to be silent and to sneak around without being noticed. Well, as long as she didn't drift off to sleep. She had felt herself nodding off more than once already. The dim rooms weren't really helping any.

Nonetheless, there was enough action to keep her from passing out completely. She needed to reach her goal in a decent amount of time in order to succeed. As she made her way down a narrow walkway, she tried to concentrate on any sounds that could mean trouble. But it was eerily quiet. Every one of her heavy steps seemed to echo uncomfortably in the restricted space, but then they would fade away as if something was muffling them.

Gradually, she grew more comfortable with her surroundings, but she couldn't help but wonder why she didn't seem to be making any progress. The walkway stretched out far beyond her sight, and nothing on the walls hinted to the end of the line. A sneaking suspicion entered her thinkpan.... was this a trap?

"This has to be... YEEEEK!"

Somehow a bunch of dummies had crept up to her and surrounded her from every side, making the already narrow space even more claustrophobic. She tried to make a run for it, but already her escape path was closed by even more dummies. Their bright colours were oddly subdued in the poor lighting, giving the dead eyed things a creepy, shadow-like appearance...

Ohgog the shadow beings were real! Immediately Abrila was standing in the middle of her nightmares, so she let out another shriek and started thrashing at them with her shovel, not paying attention to how or what she hit. But whenever she knocked one down, another appeared, and another....

A buzzer sounded, jerking Abrila awake. Light appeared at the end of the path, and she could hear voices coming from the other side. Gingerly she stepped out into the open, then met with the disappointed scowl of her instructor.