A Piece of The Sun

29. Silly Little French Girl Plays with Japanese Blades

Jean POV

Life the next few days at the compound weren't all that bad. I hadn't upgraded rooms or food accommodations yet, but Josslyn respected my right to begin food, the very basics and essentials to my plant and fruit-based diet. My breakfast consisted of oats, fruit, milk, and one vegetable. For lunch I ate salads, none too exciting, I didn't get chickpeas or fancy green goddess dressings but rather spinach, kale, carrots, and ranch dressing with water and an apple. My dinners were about the same, a huge salad and subpar cauliflower steak, seasoned with salt and pepper, a burger with beyond meat after days I was pumped full of drugs to keep my sustained and Hawke kept offering me whiskey and vodka but to each advance I declined the offer. A nagging feeling persisted in my gut days after I shat my brains out after the first enhanced combat, that feeling telling me not to drink any alcohol offered to me, as it could be a test.

Come to find out, Hawke was the tall Amazon black woman I met on my first day here and Birdie was the child that was her partner in every sense of the word. I wondered if it was even legal for them to be together, she couldn't have been any older than twenty-five, perhaps and Birdie was shy of fourteen in looks. Their heights were nowhere near comparable either, she dawned on him. She was a brazen trans woman, ready to knock anyone down who stepped in her way and she held the fort with the news that Josslyn and Alan had been whisked away on a "mission", code for running away to see about Salome's death that I wasn't allowed to. 

I won't lie, it stung like a bitch. It hurts. She is my grandmother too in every way that counts and blood or not, I should have been there. I can only imagine my father and stepmother being there without me and wondering where I am to attend my grandmother's funeral and having a fit that I am not there. Surely he'd blackened Alan or Noah's eye with the news knowing where I am he'll be here any moment when after he pays his respects to Salome and the rest of our misfit family. He has too. Papa wouldn't let me rot here. 

Hawke and Birdie ensured that within three days of training, I knew how to successfully target. They spent strenuous hours with me learning to shoot and target in all the places that were kill shots. Between the eyes, in the forehead, at the heart, getting both lungs, a kidney, and right in the groin. I had no sympathy or admiration for the craftsmanship of firearms, I didn't like how they felt in my hands. Instant death such as guns lacked grace and tact for murder. I quickly found out after nearly ending my uncle's life, that my penchant for death was always there. Just buried deep. 

Hawke and Birdie had no problem surrounding the concept of murder, of course, but they didn't take to it like me. Some new kid coming here, no, they killed before and only came here to evade getting caught and to legitimize their acts so that they could continue their hobby of murder. They took to it naturally. Messily at first but under strict guidance learned to kill without being seen and cut clean-up time in half. They were eager to show me how to flank someone and let the clean-up be under fifteen minutes. And how to bleed someone dry while keeping them awake for every single moment.

Maybe my heart wasn't in it yet but I would be lying if some of this didn't interest me. Birdie would take the time to teach me to use my beauty and figure to capture people. He said "The power of seduction is the greatest tool you can use", and to some degree I concurred, nodding feebly. 

After gun training, I would be thrust into combat with randomized students under the influence and Hawke's watchful eye. Sessions felt like twenty minutes would go on for six hours or longer. 

I was eager to pass my training courses and exams. In under a week, I've learned hand-to-hand combat and firearm training. In most cases, this kind of training and how far I've succeeded should be impossible, but I was lucky to have surpassed so much at this going rate with the number of herbs and drugs I was one, getting more accomplished than the average person. I accredited my readiness to my background in dancing, working out, breaking things in my body and being uncomfortable, lurching and jumping, everything about fighting nearly being the same as to dancing. Ballet being the sport that it is, wasn't for the faint of heart and neither is any sort of fighting.