V M [Q] Like No One Ever Was

[Edward Elric]

They were like soldiers in a way, and that way was that they were a gathering of well trained individuals full of talents and survivability. In the deepest essence of a soldier, however, they were not alike. A soldier’s core tenants revolve around discipline, rigidity, and duty. A hunter’s core tenants were their own, and in that way they were very much individuals, and very unlike a soldier. Musing over the differences, Ellie had concluded that combat effectiveness was where their similarities ended.

Ellie sat quietly, listening. Ordinarily she was not quiet. Ordinarily she was outspoken, and quick to reject instruction or lecture in any of its myriad forms. These were not ordinary circumstances, however, so she had tempered her baser nature for the sake of the end goal. That end goal, glimmering far at the end of the tunnel like a beacon, that end goal that dripped golden, molten money like sap from the tap of a maple. She’d always known she would get to it eventually, but pursuit of one’s own goals somehow seemed to supersede the background tasks one kept in the dusty recesses of their mind.

And that’s just what this had always been to her, too - a background task. Passing through New Abraxas was old hats for her, something she did all the time, and of course she’d always heard about the University of New Abraxas and the Hunter’s Training Course. What did she need something like that for, though? Just to flex on a bunch of wanna-bes and has-beens? No sir, no thank you, that wasn’t Ellie Williams’ style.

But recently some jobs had been opening up, and an increasing number of posted jobs on the community bulletin board were post scripted with the same message: ‘For Hunter’s Training Course Alumni’. Taking lucrative jobs? That was the meat and potatoes that kept her going, kept her coinpurse full, and kept her days and nights wild. The top jobs weren’t up for grabs anymore, not just for anybody. Now the New Abraxas upper crust wanted resumes and credentials. Pffft.

It was everything she hated: structure, conformity, showing up and showing off for a bunch of poindexter pencil pushers to get a piece of paper that meant nothing to her so she could do the jobs that meant everything to her.

And no matter how much she hated it, it was necessary, and the time had come where she could put it off no longer.

So there she sat, one of a dozen transient hunters buckled by the weight of necessity, listening to some shirt from the brass lecture on about shit like ‘liability’ and ‘signing waivers’. She glanced over at a man she’d designated ‘Tank-Top Flat-Top the First’, all muscles and sweat stains, and smirked. Guys like that, and girls like her? They ate liability waivers for breakfast.

The shirt wrapped up, pushing his glasses up his nose.

“Any questions?” he asked, looking around at the brutes and mercs decorating the fenceline and the upturned crates-made-seats.

Crickets.

“Alright, then. I’ll pass around this clipboard, and you can sign your name after the events that interest you. You’re welcome to sign up for all of them, or one of them, or anything in between. You can even sign up for none of them!” he started laughing, a breathy wheezy sound, and then tapered off when he remembered his audience.

They did not look amused.

The clipboard made its rounds, and a couple X-marks-the-spots came from the group. Ellie herself marked the situations she found herself most comfortable in: archery was a specialty, of course. The obstacle course, too, she was confident she could move through in a way that would put the meatheads to shame. The gun range would be easy, too, since she was a crack-shot. The off-road vehicle course she skirted…she wasn’t an incapable driver, but she wasn’t anything special, either.

She kept her eye on Flat-Top. There was something about his nonchalance, and the way he conversed with the others that had left her gears turning. She remembered someone she’d known as a kid, a scrawny boy with a keen aptitude for menial tasks that made him endearing to start to know, then infuriating to know at length. The kind of guy you’d grow to hate because he could be better than you at anything he’d tried, even though he looked non-assuming. That kid was a mousy red-head, and Flat-Top was a bulky blonde, but their energy was the same…

As if on cue Flat-Top looked over from his conversation and locked eyes with Ellie. She tried to look busy, diary open in her lap, but she heard his footsteps as he approached. When they stopped in front of her, well…she had to look up, didn’t she?

And he was looking down.

He leaned in close to her ear.

“Brave girl,” he said, but quietly. She was sure the others couldn’t hear. She was listening, though. Closely. “Let’s see how brave you are out there, huh? Let’s see what the little girl can do when she’s trying to be a man. I’ll bet you’re fast, sure. I’ll bet you’re clever too. But you won’t outshoot me, and you won’t scale a wall the way I can. This is mine, and we both know it.”

She could see him smirking, his lips were just far enough from her ear. He leaned back and put a hand on her shoulder.

“That’s how it is, girly.”

Maybe the revulsion showed up on her face, but it didn’t diminish his smile, and damned if that smile wasn’t a bit charming…sleazy, but confident, and she knew he believed what he said.

She didn’t grace him with a response, but when he walked away she penciled out his outline. All torso and some legs, with arms like tree trunks. He was a specimen, and if she was into that kind of thing she might feel a flush, but she wasn’t so she didn’t. She couldn’t nail down the eyes, but then again, she never could. Somehow he made her think about a time out in the woods with the red-haired boy where he’d challenged her to scale up the tree and she’d fallen off one of the lower branches. That had been embarrassing, and despite herself, she had a tough time keeping the thought from her head when she pictured the Training Grounds. Frowning, she sketched a slash across his eyes on the page.

She wrote next to him - “big assholes have the least pinch” and contented herself to bring him shame on the course.

 

[Edward Elric]

The best part about a stay in New Abraxas, though she was loath to admit it to herself, was always the University’s accommodations. It wasn’t the first time she’d buckled down and signed up for a course of some kind for a certificate, or some other reputation bolstering document, but it was the first time in a long time; while a lot had changed for her, personally, almost nothing had changed about the University’s digs.

It wasn’t often she got to take a bath, and even when she did, it wasn’t usually a bath so much as it was a glorified dunk in a river or a hasty, cold rinse under some water spigot behind a building somewhere. Lavishing in the University’s bathhouse was a luxury nearly unknown to her, so she took full advantage, and when lowered herself into the tub of steaming water she could actually feel the patina of grime that had accumulated over her skin lift off with a cleansing sensation she imagined was mostly reserved for horses being hosed down after a long ride. She took a breath, sank under the sudsy surface, and got her hair all the way wet. Her red locks fanned out in the soapy water forming an ethereal halo about her head, and when she broke the surface of the water they dropped down to hang past her shoulders, the inky dark red of blood or viscera.

She was aware that it had been a long time since her last haircut, though, try as she might she could not pinpoint exactly how long. It was longer than she usually kept it, but coin was often scarce, so a haircut was one of the non-essentials she’d culled from her life sometime prior. She didn’t like to cut it herself, either. …she was no good at it, and the last time she’d done it she’d looked like a fool for a humiliating period of time after, until she’d been able to get into a proper barber to work it over.

The University staff, which she assumed was made up largely of stay-behind-alumni who’d grown fond of living in modern accommodations on a planet that otherwise largely ignored such advancements, had left her a long wooden handled scrub-brush that was almost comically oversized, some soap, and a very small bottle brown bottle of generic looking shampoo whose label was faded beyond any attempt of interpretation. Regardless, the trifecta of cleaning apparatus brought her to a state of cleanliness she hadn’t known in a New Abraxas minute, and Ellie lingered in the tub until the water cold, then eventually grew frigid before she could bring herself to exit.

In the time she’d been soaking, the staff had taken her clothes, travel worn almost to the point of inexcusable wear and tear, and given them a wash. That was a part of the standard here, she knew from her previous stay, though it had been a detail she’d forgotten about until she found the pile of laundered clothes folded neatly. Paranoia dictated that she check and make sure everything was as she’d left it, and aside from the cleaning, everything was in fact exactly as she’d left it, she noted with a hint of approval.

That evening found Ellie in a sparsely furnished room that smelled faintly of watered down cleaning solution and cigarettes. It was the young woman’s assumption that the cleaning staff probably found an open window in a room to be cleaned as a perfect opportunity for an extra smoke break, which explained the aroma. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant - Ellie found the habit of smoking repulsive, but on New Abraxas, the majority of those who indulged in the habit could fine clean and well grown tobacco that burned and scented in a way that different from its cousins on the more streamlined planets, and that gave it a sword of pungent herby aroma that she’d grown tolerant of, and nearly fond for.

She fell asleep with her journal on her lap, and a sketch of Flat-Top from the top half of the day detailed at tedium in graphite grey, almost perfect, aside from the eyes that she’d scratched out in a hasty scribble. Pairs of eyes surrounded the man, orbiting him like so many different imperfect moons, each showing a different accent of mood or expression. She hadn’t been content with any of them, because none of them were quite right. It was always the detail of the human eye that caused her the most consternation - such intricate depth, and how could one capture that on a piece of paper? Eventually she’d decided fuck it then undecided it, decided again, and fallen asleep sometime after all of it.

When she awoke it was to the sound of a deep, reverberant GONG that she knew signaled the beginning of things, when things were to be happening. It was a universal sign, the toll of a bell, and the University of New Abraxas was no exception.

She’d fallen asleep fully garbed which trimmed down significantly on the time it took her to get ready. She bound her hair back in a horse tail, gathered up her gear, and set herself to the task of morning bathroom rituals and a hasty breakfast at the mess before making her way to the training grounds.

There they spread out over the grounds, some of them stretching, others of them scanning the course pre-trial to get a feel for what they were up against. The events, each with their varied participants, were handed out to them on a simple itinerary that explained what event was happening, who was going to participate in each, and when. She found with a frown that she’d signed up for all the same events as Flat-Top, real name Sergei.

The first event was one of her strongest, as she’d known it would be: the archery range. At ten AM sharp the contestants lined up in order of number, with notable gaps in number procession to account for participants who hadn’t signed up for the event. Ellie, number eleven, found her way to the line in the sand that marked her starting location. Stance perfect, she took a breath, drew her bow with a casual ease, released her breath and let go of the bowstring at the same time. A healthy twang of string that would never grow old to her followed by a thick wumph as the arrow sank into the bullseye.

Another bullseye, and then another shot that missed its mark by a hair’s breadth put her at the top of the standings for the archery range event.

The off-road vehicle track was next, and she didn’t sign up for it, so she made her way to the obstacle course early. It gave her an opportunity to scope out the course in its entirety, and map out her own plan of attack, which was always helpful - seeing an obstacle for the first time upon encountering it wouldn’t necessarily stop her, but it definitely wouldn’t be a competitive advantage either.

When she ran the course she placed second. Flat-Top (Sergei, she’d reminded herself) had been as good as his word and scaled the wall faster than she’d been able to. Quick as she was, he had her in raw strength, and he was remarkably graceful as a climber. He topped the rankings on the obstacle course.

The gun range was a neck in neck thing. At the sound of the officiants’ “pull!” a series of clay pigeons were launched through the air for the contestants to pick up with a rifle of bolt action make, single fire, with a kick like a mule that bucked against Ellie’s shoulder in a way that any practiced marksman expected from a weapon of its caliber. It had been a photo finish, but…she topped Flat-Top by a slight margin, just a single pigeon, and that was all it took.

The man looked like she’d run over his dog when she received her certificate, and Ellie couldn’t get out of there fast enough. The luxury of the University’s finest amenities had been well and good for a night, but settlement living was a rough thing for Ellie who preferred her own company to that of others…well, her own company, and that of a horse. She made her way to the stables and paid the stablehand a small tip in coin when he brought back Shimmer, her horse, and Ellie found that she was in pristine condition: rubbed down, brushed, tacked up carefully…the sign of a good stable. She marked the stable down in her memory as ‘one of the good ones’ then rolled up her fresh new “Hunter’s Training Course Graduate” certificate, stashed it in her saddlebag, and resolved to hit the road for a little break from society.

Like No One Ever Was
WC: 2597/2500 (Google Docs Count)
Quest Complete