It's a Spy vs. Spy World

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen

  The rest of that week went by without anymore incidents or news about the two baddies that had mysteriously came back to life and killed two of our agents.

 However, that didn't mean I stopped thinking about it.

 Although I still had to train Rick, which occupied most of my time especially since I had to get him into decent shape for Friday at the latest. This task, surprisingly enough, was not extremely hard to do. Rick informed me one day that he had a photographic memory which explained how all the text memorizing and computer stuff (basically anything tech or text based) came easy to him (it helped that he was also quite smart). It also helped that he had an amazing teacher, who I'd love to say is me but is really Bridget. Her flash cards were magical. Rick even learned the basics of the Russian language in less than a week, which by any standards is quite impressive. His success was largely because of Bridget, but that didnt mean I didnt do my job.

 I just helped Ricky in other areas. Such as stuff that required the use of his body, so everything else. Physical training with Rick was definitely more mentally taxing than physically although he was making serious progress. After the first day I think he realized he had to step it up if he intended to not only catch up to our age level but to continue to stay here as well. He wasnt even close to being any rival to me but he could beat the twelve year olds and some of the thirteens. Which, although it doesnt sound like it, is quite an amazing accomplishment, especially when considering the fact that I had assumed he was hopeless after the show hed put on his first day.

 I have to admit I was sort of proud of myself for getting him to where he was in less than a week; and I guess I was proud of him too, but I would never tell him that. He had a tendancy to let compliments go to his head and i woulndt want him to get to full of himself; confidence doesnt suit him.

 When Friday came along it seemed, to me at least, that not having Carter on our team wasn't such a big deal, and just as I had to continuously tell the rest of my team; we would still rack up points elsewhere. Seriously, I had no idea why they had so much doubt in my judgement; when had I ever been wrong before?

 Alright I had been wrong a couple times before (thinking blowing up a part of an empty wing in HQ would result in no punishment being one of those times), but I had faith in Rick and I thought he was definitly ready for challenge day. It was all he could talk about he was so excited. I was too although not because it was my first time.

 First thing that day everyone went to breakfast as usual, only instead of stuffing our faces with whatever we wanted everyone ate energy bars and drank disgusting but healthy power drinks (I wasnt completely sure if the twins had something to do with the disgusting part). Other than that and the fact that we sat only with our fellow teammates (separated even before the challenges began) breakfast was otherwise normal, or as normal as breakfast can be when everyone in the room is either a full fledged spy or a spy in training.

 After a seriously tense breakfast full of death glares from the opposing team (most being from Audrey directed at me) everyone made their way to the central training area as a group. As a side note, when I say everyone I mean all the junior and senior AITs because the younger AITs compete with each other separately since obviously it would be slightly unfair to make them face people older then them and twice as more competetive.

 When everyone was gathered in the central training area our supervising/ judging teachers Mr. Schmidt, Miss Hastings and Mr. Carmichael walked in and stood in front of our group of roughly 24. They had set everything that needed to be set up the previous night so the training area looked slightly different; more equipped for challenges rather than learning. For some reason Rick was taking in the new set up silently. I suspected this was because he was either nervous for the competition or I'd already told him everything he needed to know and therefore he had no questions.