Seeking Strays - Chapter 83 - Practical (Patreon)

The first two cohorts’ practicals went terribly. There was no other way to put it. In the first Cohort alone, one of the Canaries shot an Awoken, two of the Awoken got in a fight over who had rights to fight the monster, and only Patrick—who I threw on the ground as a demonstration—actually managed to find the monster. In doing so, though, his Canary got lost and he didn’t have enough combat power to take down the Redcap.

Yeah, it was a nightmare. While Quinn and I were busy talking the two Awoken kids down, Bryce and Tessa had to actually put the Calamity down themselves ‘cause the rest of Cohort one was busy imploding. I wasn’t sure how we were going to grade them, but it looked like a bunch of fails right off the bat.

Cohort 2 did moderately better than Cohort one. At least, as long as we ignored the fact that one of the Awoken nearly wiped out the entire Cohort with her ability. They at least found the Calamity, and were even working together up until they approached it. Then everything turned to hell.

As for nearly wiping out the entire team… One of the Awoken, Rebecca Lorey, had an ability called Bloodletting. Basically, she could suck the life out of anything bleeding to empower herself. While the team fought over who got to take down the Calamity, she ensured they were all injured enough to empower herself.

It wasn’t a bad idea in practice. There was just one issue—Redcaps also grew stronger against bleeding targets. With the entire team bleeding, it turned into a ferocious beast that quickly overpowered them. Things got even worse when Rebecca lost control of her ability and started draining the entire cohort even further. It didn’t help that Bryce and Tessa were busy dealing with a group of reporters poking around the arcade.

Quinn and I had to take care of it. My Guardian was totally focused on isolating Rebecca, which left me to deal with the Redcap. It was by itself, so it was easy enough to put down. It was distracted mauling an Awoken with the ability Diamond Skin to limited success when I approached. 

I squeezed the trigger of my Vi-rifle, and golden bolts slammed into the dog-like Calamity. It let out a pained whimper, and its maddened eyes locked onto me. It’s pure red head, like flesh fully exposed to the air, chomped back down onto the boy pinned underneath it without any regard for me.

”Help!” The Awoken screamed as the Calamity’s teeth scraped harmlessly against his skin. He was totally fine outside of the fear threatening to swallow him.

One of the Canaries fired away at the Calamity, causing sparks as the bullets slammed into the kid underneath the monster. The Redcap took several shots, and let out a feral growl. Without any hesitation, it jumped off the Awoken in a pounce toward the Canary.

I darted forward to meet it, and my boot slammed into the monster’s neck before it could close the gap. A sharp impact jolted up my leg, and the Redcap collapsed to the ground—

Rat-tat-tat-tat!

Several bullets slammed into the back of my body armor from a frightened Canary. The breath was knocked out of me, and pain shot up my back. More importantly, one of the bullets slammed into the Vi-rifle and knocked it out of my hands. “Fuck! Stop shooting!”

“S-sorry!” His gun clattered noisily to the ground, and he flinched back away from me like he just met the eyes of an angry hellhound.

Like that makes it all better! When we got out of here, I’d ensure he spent every waking hour going over gun safety. Pyre, the Calamity wasn’t even near me! I rubbed at my sore back. Thankfully, my instincts had kicked in and my poor tail flicked out of the way just before he could fire. My body armor had taken most of the bullets.

“Grrrr.” The Redcap staggered back to its feat, and twisted its head around uncertainly from where I kicked it. Before it could go after anyone else, I jumped onto its back. It tried to buck me off, though went still entirely as I cracked its already injured neck in the wrong direction.

I almost ripped out its heart as a little reward for myself, but paused just shy of summoning out Rend. Not only was I surrounded by Harbor personnel, but the media was here too. That’d be one quick way to end up in a jail cell.

I checked on Quinn only to find her doing the tried and true method of choking Rebecca out to get her to calm down. Rebecca was fully encased in a ball of water, and slowly losing the fight to stay conscious. 

After that fiasco, the paramedics on call rushed in to take care of the scene. I, ‘course, refused treatment. After checking on the students, I moved back to a secluded command room to clean myself up. Only Quinn and I had access, so I didn’t have to worry about anyone freaking out while I stitched myself back together.

Funnily enough, out of everyone I was the most injured after being shot in the back repeatedly. As far as I could tell, most of the others were just low on blood. I was lucky none of those shots hit me in the head, or it would’ve been a whole different story.

Quinn got back just as I finished bandaging up my arm, and started cleaning up the blood scattered across me. Quite a bit had dropped back down onto my tail while I’d been busy dealing with stuff, leaving splotches of red marring my silver fur.

“Nice going with that Calamity.” Quinn handed me a water bottle, and grabbed the towel from my hands to help me out. My tail stiffened when she touched it with the towel, though relaxed as she started to clean the blood out. “You okay?”

”Be fine in a couple days. Just a few bruises.” I popped open the bottle and took a drink. “What a shitshow.”

”No kidding. What are they teaching those kids these days?” Quinn got one last spot, and then tossed the blood-soaked towel onto a table. “Not to mention we’ll have to keep a close eye on Rebecca in the future.”

”Quinn, we’ll have to keep a close eye on all of them.” I rolled my eyes. The Academy did just start, but that wasn’t an excuse. “Next practical we’ll have to make it more clear that this isn’t a competition.”

At the end of the day, all the Cohorts’ failings could be tied back to being overly competitive. The first cohort literally fought each other, Patrick was in such a hurry he abandoned his Canary, and Rebecca had been too focused on ensuring her competition didn’t win that she nearly made all of them lose. Permanently.

Cohorts were supposed to work together. That was the whole point of slumping eight kids together like that. In the future, they’d have competitions, but it’d always be against other cohorts. Infighting set an incredibly bad example for the future.

The most infuriating part of it all wasn’t that they were totally incompetent. They just didn’t have enough experience. In a perfect world, Rebecca’s plan actually would’ve worked and she could’ve taken the Redcap down easily. Only, she wasn’t used to having that much power and it instantly let it go to her head. 

They were just kids. Stupid, idiotic kids with an ego and just enough knowledge to come up with really bad plans. We’re Quinn and I like this back then? At what point did we graduate being stupid kids? Most of them were just 16, with only a few outliers like Sylvie that were 15.

“They’re too young for all of this.” Giving a teenager an assault rifle was already worrying enough without counting all the powers and stuff.

“I know…” Quinn sighed heavily. It seemed she was thinking along the same lines as me. “What can we do, though? They’re already awakened.”

“Still. The UCS should push the awakening ceremony till they’re at least 18.” Till they at least had enough experience to understand that their actions had consequences.

“You know that won’t happen.” Quinn patted my tail lightly, and then pushed it out over her lap. “Still, they’re not totally helpless. What do you think?”

She had a point. Awakened tended to die even with Canaries next to them to mitigate that. Unfortunately, the UCS couldn’t afford to wait for kid to grow up before getting more soldiers. Or they couldn’t in the past, at least. Things had calmed down quite a bit since the 26 cities were made. “They’re competing way too much.”

“I thought we made it perfectly clear this time.” My Guardian grabbed a laptop and started to work on it. “Cohort 3 should be a little bit better.”

“You think so?” My ears perked up, and I forced my tail to stay still. The tip of it still swayed despite my best efforts.

”Two of them have support abilities, don’t they?” Quinn shrugged. “Can’t imagine they’ll try to fight against Sylvie and Caliber. I guess we’ll find out in a little bit, though.”

”Right.” She wasn’t just saying that because Sylvie was in Cohort 3… she had a point, though. Vanessa’s Expedition was a support ability, and Noah—one of the other Awoken—had an ability called Red Guard that could block attacks. 

Assuming all of them play nice together, it should be a quick hunt and onto Cohort 4. Hopefully, nothing would go wrong this time. 

— POV: Sylvie —

Sylvie ran her hands through her tail nervously. Today was the day. She’d been feeling the tension ever since lunch with her sister this morning. Things… things would go well. Alongside her Cohort, she’d studied all the likely Calamities it could be, theorized against them, and even been working at strengthening her ability.

Last Light was… weird. Honestly, she thought it was a bit useless to begin with. After talking with Reyna and practicing it, though, she hadn’t been idle. Slowly but surely, she’d been trying to convince the people around her that her ability had a side benefit of granting her super strength. 

The more people believed her, the stronger she could get through Last Light while she had it active. It created a virtuous cycle where she could convince more people, grow stronger, and then use that strength to convince even more people. Granted, her pool of people to talk to was kind of small, so she hadn’t managed to convince too many people. Still… hopefully it’d be enough for the practical.

“Are you ready?” River asked. Unlike the rest of the Cohort who were internally freaking out, he seemed totally calm and collected. His calm was infectious, and soon her own beating heart stilled.

”As I’ll ever be.” She tried to smile, and adjusted the straps on her ballistic armor. None of them had fancy costumes—not that she’d want one anyway. Quinn looked so cool in her casual style compared to all the pretentious Guardians.

They were in a side tent a bit of ways away from the Silverport Amusement Park. All the Cohorts came in one bus, and they had to wait pretty far out so they wouldn’t be able to see anything. Honestly, she envied Cohort 1 a bit for being able to go first. All this waiting around was killing her.

Vanessa moved over to the two of them. Similarly, she had on a ballistic vest and a rifle hanging from her side. “Ah! I’m so excited! When we get to see that ugly Calamity, we’ll go wam! And it’ll go bam! And then we’ll all go…um, Sam?”

”Sam?” Sylvie rolled her eyes. Apparently not everyone was as nervous as she first thought. Was it really okay to give someone like Vanessa a gun?

“I couldn’t think of anything else, okay?!” Vanessa’s ears flopped, and her eyes watered up. “Noah! Caliber! Quit brooding over there!”

Noah and Caliber, the other two Awoken in their cohort, sat off to the side deep in a conversation. Noah looked up to them. “Bit busy V.”

”Ugh, you’re always busy.” Vanessa’s head sagged dramatically. “What about you, Triss? You busy too?”

Triss sat at a table off to the side. She smoothly cleaned and put a rifle back together. It looked like a DMR of some kind, though Sylvie wasn’t quite good enough with guns to tell what. “Busy.”

”Ugh…” Vanessa groaned again, and drooped pitifully like all her fun was stolen away. “Oh! I know! Noah! Caliber!”

”What?” The two looked over, and broke out of their conversation.

”How about a little competition?!” Vanessa grabbed Sylvie’s arm, and pulled her close. “Me and the ever glorious Sylvie against you two busy-bodies.” 

Sylvie carefully extracted herself from the over-excited White Rabbit. “V, I don’t think that’s a good idea—“

”I’m in.” Noah shrugged, and looked back to his Canary. The girl, Ruby, was off napping to the side without a care in the world. “She’s probably in too?”

”What do you think, Ryan?” Caliber asked his own Canary.

Ryan pulled out an earbud, and turned off his phone. “Sure? Four versus Four sounds fair.”

”Then let’s totally do it!” Vanessa hopped away. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

”Well, now that you’ve said that…” Sylvie shook her head. Reyna frequently talked about cohorts needing to work together, so was this really okay? Although… technically they were working together? They all agreed to have a competition, didn’t they? 

River patted her shoulder. “It’ll be fine, Syl. If things go south, your sister will bail us out.”

”She won’t always be there, though.” Going into the practical with the idea that everything would be fine was a bad mindset. A Calamity could kill any of them before anyone could even react. 

“No, she won't." He nodded his head in understanding. “Still, this is a good opportunity. In the field, it’ll just be me and you. It’ll be a rare day that four Guardians are all sent to the same thing.”

”I guess…” Sylvie’s ears twitched uncertainly. He had a point, though. “You been practicing your aim?”

”Everyday after school.” River ran a thumb over his rifle’s receiver. Although they had shooting lessons in class, the two of them had been going to the firing range after classes were over most days. “We’re about to see if all of that training’s paid off.”

”No kidding.” She heard enough stories from Reyna to know shooting at idle targets and shooting while a Calamity was hunting you were two entirely different things. Still, every bit of practice helped.

“Oh!” Vanessa moved over to a corner of the tent, and waved them all over with a shout. “Group huddle, A team! That means you too, Triss!”

Triss looked up from her disassembled rifle, and her hands flew across the weapon. In a few seconds, it was all put back together. The girl moved over to the three of them. “Fine.” 

“Yay! Now, let’s make a plan.” Her head perked up, and her ears alertly stood up straight. “No eavesdropping!”

The other four weren’t even paying attention to begin with. Sylvie sighed, and shook her head… would this really be okay?