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| Rites of Passage | |
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| Topic Started: Dec 20 2009, 05:19 PM (297 Views) | |
| Jara | Dec 20 2009, 05:19 PM Post #1 |
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Date: 29 July 1988 Location: Undisclosed “Внимание, глисты!” Rows upon rows of white-clad cadets suddenly stood up straighter and more rigidly than before, if that was even possible. The air was sick with tension around them, nervousness and anxiety, and it threatened to suffocate their little lungs. Little fingers curled into nervous fists and dug closely-trimmed nails into palms, teeth chewing fretfully on chapped lips until they bled between the fine cracks. A few of them trembled imperceptibly in their little starched uniforms, as bleached as the Spartan room around them. A room that they had known since they formed their first cognitive thoughts and were able to recall them. This white, Spartan room, devoid of chairs or tables or blackboards or any sort of furniture or equipment, was their classroom. There was no clock. One wasn’t necessary. They would stay in class until their instructor said otherwise. Sometimes benches were brought in, hauled in along with tattered textbooks on their great Republica de Cuba, its illustrious revolution that toppled the bourgeois and the dictators, restored the lands to the people that worked them. Such a utopia requires constant maintenance, though. They learned that, and they learned of the forces outside of their nation, the imperialist hegemonic powers that desired to infect the world with capitalist elitism and efface the teachings of Marxism from the face of the earth at the cost of the laborers, the people. These forces lurked outside their shores, and even within, and required vigilance and defense against. Moreover, they required opposition, to restore proper balance. The Cold War was only beginning. It was a favorite lecture of their current instructor, a Russian officer they only knew as Vassily. He wasn’t very friendly. Well, none of the mentors were. But he was far less scary than the bear-man. <<Today is your last day of infancy! No one will hold your hand from this point forward. You are responsible for your actions and performance. Do poorly, and the consequences will be swift!>> Performance evaluations were common enough among the children. They came in regular intervals. Most tested for scholastic aptitude, reciting facts about their country’s history from memory, key figures, political theory, social acculturation. Those were easy, and the first few years went by with little incidence among the group. Then began the languages, Spanish, Russian, English, its grammar and phonetics and regional dialects… the lessons began to grow a little more difficult each time, and some students did not perform as well as the directores liked. Unlike most schools, however, there was no remedial course for them. Education was a privilege for their kind and certainly not necessary. La Patria required good, strong laborers. Mutants, on the whole, were stronger and hardier than their mainline human cousins. They made excellent field workers, harvesters, construction crews, and the success of their country was built by their invaluable hands. Being sent to the labor camps was not an insult or sign of inadequacy, for everyone had a role in society, an obligation to be productive. Or else you were nothing but excess, and idleness was the most punishable sin. Society had no use for derelict delinquents. The children had been scouted for all across the country. Considering Cuba was only a mere 1,250 kilometers long and 193 kilometers at its widest, it wasn’t too daunting a feat. As mutants, they posed a problem to the well-being of the country’s population, and the government took it upon itself to ensure the nation’s genetic prosperity. Mutant infants were removed from their homes, inspected by the best physicians the country had—and Cuban doctors are the best in the hemisphere, after all. From there, the mutant child is evaluated for proper placement. They were sorted out at the nursery and sent off to different provinces, each specializing in whatever task assigned, centers for agricultural, construction, or industrial instruction, or, if the individual fell below expectations, research. All mutants were suitable for these jobs, but a small percentage displayed an extra potential. Perhaps mental, perhaps physical, maybe even both. It all boiled down to units of labor, so if a mutant child showed advanced development physical in nature, or mental, it was only imperative to put that individual to use. These children were in such a program, and they were reminded constantly of how lucky they were. Because a life as a laborer was a hard one, unspectacular, and if they managed to succeed in this program, they would have the honor of serving their country. And having heard these things from the crib, they accepted nothing less as the truth. In the end, they all worked to serve their patria, mutant and human alike. <<Those with the most potential will remain in the program.>> The officer paused, looking at the young mutants assembled. He wrinkled his nose disdainfully. <<The remaining chaff goes straight to the labor camps.>> A few whimpers murmured through the group, in the beginning of the program numbering over seventy, now only a mere twenty. Every evaluation, their numbers were whittled away. Today was the last one. If they made it… there would only be more, fighting to ascend the ranks, secure placement in the most elite of squads. It was only the beginning. But these little mutants were born to fight. And at eight years old, they had better be ready. |
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| Jara | Dec 20 2009, 06:10 PM Post #2 |
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Unregistered
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<<Pair up! 24 with 13! 7 with 9! 11 with 2! 52 with 36!...>> The officer barked out numbers, children tensing or flinching or perking up as they heard theirs called. They had not been given names. If they graduated, then they would be given one. <<Hey! 7! Open up your damn ears!>> One of the children looked up, slightly startled. Mainly because Officer Vassily had chosen to march up to the youth and shout in her ear when she hadn’t heard her assignment the first time. She deserved it completely, and she did her best not to flinch. <<Are you having trouble understanding me?!>> “Niet!” she responded, trying to make her childish voice as adult-like as possible. It sounded more like a squeak, her voice betraying her complete trepidation over the evaluation. She wasn’t ready for this, a recitation, maybe, more parroting of the Communist party’s principles like a good little pionero. Anything but fighting. Hadn’t it been for her feral abilities, Siete would have surely been sent straight to the sugarcane fields. Her physical measurements were below average, smaller and thinner. She had difficulty adding onto body mass, despite the specialized supplements given to the members of this particular group. The physicians that regularly looked over them, Dr. Jara and Dr. Montenegro, suspected she’d top off at around 153 centimeters. It was a rather abysmal forecast. <<29 is waiting! Move it, animal!>> Nodding, the girl skittered off towards her designated sparring partner. Enemy. Person. It seemed entirely surreal, and suddenly she was wishing she could just go back to studying the Cyrillic alphabet, or maybe go over that one joint-locking position just one more time and make sure she had it right. She did well enough during drills. At least she thought so. Until she finally paid attention to her opponent, a boy who had about a whole head over her, and rhinoceros-like skin. He glowered at her, almost meanly. 8 snarled right back, well, when their mentor wasn’t looking, at least. Each pair drifted off to a set part of the room, placement unquestioned and simply known. They’d been doing this for a long while, and they took up their spots around the KGB officer, drifting about like satellites until holding position, skinny eight year-old arms going up in a defensive position, hands balling into fists, little feet sliding into proper stance. The Russian moved off, leaving the young ferals to stand there. The smell of their nervousness was almost overwhelming, but learning rudimentary control of their animal-like senses had been one of the earliest lessons they’d received. They waited until the Russian commanded them to start, no one moving a single muscle. Obedience had also been part of the fundamentals. <<Begin!>> And their merry den of learning filled with snarls. 29 charged at her, pulling back his hand and striking out open-palmed. His body pivoted with the motion, at the hips, at the shoulders, and the strike itself looked loose. Except when it finally made contact, when the muscles tensed as they were supposed to, tiring the body less but delivering the most force behind a strike. No one in that room was pulling punches. With a slide of her foot and a shift in bodyweight, Siete dodged the strike to the side, aimed at her face, and brought her forearm up to deflect the arm. She hissed, making a grab for his arm and digging her small claws into what might as well have been rawhide. It barely left a scratch, but she was sure a kick to his groin would register a little higher. Siete wasn’t above fighting dirty. 29 grunted, but the hit definitely was not as cushiony as Siete would’ve anticipated. He’d turned slightly, catching the hit with his thigh. That was the least of her worries, though. In that same move he’d grabbed hold of her foot. Siete could only watch as his face came zooming towards hers. It wasn’t a pretty sight to begin with. Along with that leathery skin, 29 also had something of a facial deformity, bony plating sprouting from his eyebrows all on his forehead into a hammerhead formation. In comparison, Siete was a prettier child. Besides the fangs, the tail, she was more passably human, with good olive skin, green eyes, nice straight nose— Crack. And suddenly her world was filled with white-hot pain. She remembered falling to the floor, 29 throwing her to the floor. The impact wasn’t like any injury she’d had during drills, but she knew something definitely was wrong, that something definitely was broken. Blood gushed out her nose and soaked into her shirt, and it hurt, it hurt really, really bad. It was all she could think about, even as the rhino-boy drove a knee into her back and started pulling her into a lock, trying to snap her elbow. <<Get off get off GET OFF!>> Something snapped, and not just in her elbow. Everything did, an ugly, frightening sensation, like something was being ripped, like chickens being quartered and their little bones popped out of place, except she didn’t hear it, she felt it, running down her bones like calcified tuning forks. She felt herself thrash, and the weight of 29 on top of her felt like nothing. He tumbled off, Siete scrambling to her feet, but the only thing she could think about was how much her nose had hurt and that 29 did it and that she wanted him to hurt very, very badly. She looked around for the boy, hissing and spitting and snarling and pouncing and biting and tearing and— BANG BANG BANG BANG Siete dropped to the floor. The fighting around them stopped, some sparring units already having concluded their match, the victorious and defeated already beginning to segregate. The fights in progress quickly scattered, though, hissing at the sight of blood, whimpering at the state of the tattered armored feral gurgling little foaming bubbles of blood from his mouth, and staring at the large spotted cat that had sprung up in their ranks so unexpectedly slowly revert back into their classmate, four tranquilizer darts sticking out of her side. The Russian looked at his mutant charges, his expression as derisively stoic as ever. Stranger things than a metamorph mauling one of his charges had happened. If these trainees had any hope for survival, they had best get used to seeing such things. He murmured into the small communication piece in his collar, within moments a group of medics rushing in from the nearest hallway. They put the two into gurnies and left just as quickly. Vassily watched them leave, before regarding the wide-eyed children once again. <<The rest of you, resume!>> The gears of progress never stopped. |
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1:02 AM Jul 11