On The Rocks, With A Twist (Vampire Academy) *Adrian/OC*

03. First Round

For the first several days, Joey's discovery that the field training was mostly just waiting around was proved even further. The other guardians had passed by on occasion, but all they ever seemed to do was observe and take notes. Every time she'd seen them had put her more on edge.

But thankfully, things got a lot more interesting really quickly. Her first 'Strigoi attack' occurred only less than a week into the start of her field training. And boy, was Joey ready for it. Almost five consecutive days of Adrian had certainly built up a lot of pent-up frustration. And Joey had just been itching to take it out on somebody – since she unfortunately wasn't allowed to assault the Moroi she was meant to be protecting.

Amazingly, they'd actually been out of Adrian's room for once. It turned out that even the lazy rich boy got bored of the same scenery all the time. Plus he'd decided that being down to only three bottles of vodka and two kinds of wine meant that his alcohol supply was 'running low'.

Apparently, the solution to that was going down to his father's room and taking some of his liquor instead. Joey rolled her eyes when she heard of his plan, but of course, she was in no position to tell him no. He wasn't intending to leave the Court premises or anything, so Joey just had to follow him and go along with it.

She was grateful that Adrian's father wasn't around when he staged his little breaking and taking scheme. Though her parents' unusual, interracial marriage was quite well accepted, there were still a lot of royals that looked down on her and not just because of the whole dropping out of St. Vladimir's thing. Nathan Ivashkov was one of those royals. So Joey certainly didn't miss his presence when she had no choice but to accompany Adrian to thieve from his own father's drink supply.

They'd just been on their way back to Adrian's room when it had happened. Adrian was being his usual self, so Joey had expressed her wish for someone to try and bump him off... And then, it almost seemed to come true.

A figure in black appeared out of the closest doorway and lunged straight at Adrian without hesitation. Of course, Adrian was too slow to react – probably not helped by the two drinks that he'd already had earlier – but Joey wasn't. She threw herself into the fray, roughly pushing Adrian out of the way. He looked surprised, but seemed more interested in keeping the two bottles of Jagermeister safe than anything else.

Joey didn't recognise the attacker. He was quite young with untidy, black hair and green eyes ringed with dark shadows. He had to be the Ray Hawthorne that Hana had mentioned when Joey's field training had first started – the one guardian whom she hadn't heard of.

With Adrian suitably out of the way, Joey was prepared to fight. She dived straight at newcomer Ray, who dodged out of her way. He rounded the move off with a sweeping kick, his foot hitting Joey over the back. She absorbed the brunt of the move in a crouching stance and bounced back up, following through with a punch of her own.

Ray managed to avoid it and most of the following blows, retaliating with more punches. A few of them landed, but Joey didn't let them deter her. She was running on pure adrenaline right now. She may have only been waiting five days for this, but five days was more than enough.

She used her weaker arm to block the next punch, only just about managing it, but it gave her the briefest window of opportunity to strike with her better arm. Her fist connected successfully with Ray's jaw, sending him reeling backwards and into the wall behind him.

Like with all other standard field training, Joey had been told beforehand not to hold back in fear of hurting the 'Strigoi'. The guardians had been trained for this kind of thing. If they didn't get to observe her fighting at her full potential, then the exercise was rendered futile. She'd be expected to fight to her best standards against a real Strigoi, so this was what they wanted to see now.