BABUSHKA: The Warrior's Angel

Chapter X. Special Cadet Gabriella

X. SPECIAL CADET GABRIELLA
         

THINGS, SHE THOUGHT, HAD STARTED OUT WELL ENOUGH WITH THE WORLD'S GREATEST WARRIOR. Well, that was if you didn't count the first ten years of her life when he totally ignored that she even existed. And then the following year that he had spent in and out of the comas induced by the doctors.

Her grandmother, Gaia, had tried to explain to her from an early age, each time she had bawled into her soft arms, that Captain Solomon 9er had the most difficult job in the world, watching over from the sky, keeping bad at bay so that they could all live safely, sleep peacefully, yadda, yadda, yadda.

She therefore had to 'make allowances' when he didn't reply to a single one of the voxes that she had sent every Sunday for the best part of five years to his personal ID (which, to stop her pleading, her grandmother had requisitioned from the Generalissimo's desk-diary). So making allowances and putting all that history aside she allowed her mind to drift back to the day they had first met.

It had been about a fortnight into her second year at the Academy and he had walked into the lecture theatre with a slight limp, like it was any other sunny Monday morning and she was like any other eleven-year-old cadet. As if he was just any other instructor. Well, except for the scraggy mutt healing alongside him and the large rectangular object he was pushing along on a set of squeaky old wheels, maneuvering it around the various obstacles in his path thanks to the aid of his iVisor which was already rumored by the cadets to give him the ability to read other people's voxes without their knowledge.

Draped in an old dust-sheet, the object he was wheeling was taller than his height and twice as wide but with less than a thumb's thickness so it was sufficiently intriguing an entrance to calm the voxes that were bouncing between the cadets.

Neatly parking the object next to the class podium, his dog curled up at his feet with the plastic box it had carried in by the handle firmly gripped between its teeth.

<Good morning cadets> he had started to voxcast, stepping on to the podium and casting what appeared to be a cursory glance in her direction, but before he could continue with his introduction one of the other cadets stood up and began clapping, followed by another and another and another until all the cadets were on their feet, sucking her up with them. After the applause had finally died away and everyone had sat down, the Captain continued.

<Well, it seems you all know who I am... Hopefully not just from those action-bots they've been giving away with your breakfast cereal.> A few chuckles passed between the cadets, prompting him to pause before continuing. <So, as there is no further need for introductions...> Then, off his dog's sharp bark and perked ears, he added, <Oh excuse me. Indie, cadets. Cadets, Indie,> prompting another round of chuckles before he continued in a more serious pitch. <I would like to kick off by dispelling the rumor which I understand has been voxing around the campus. Contrary to popular belief, my visor can not help me intercept cadets' voxes without their authentication... I figured that out a long time ago just by tweaking my PlayStation.>

Once more, open laughter echoed between the cadets.

In a couple of breaths, The World's Greatest Warrior had won the affection of his students, making it look so easy that anyone could see why the Generalissimo's daughter had fallen for him all those years ago. And in her own way she had fallen for him too. It really was as if those first eleven years of broken dreams hadn't counted. She had a crush on her teacher and her teacher was her father.

After the laughter had subsided he continued: <You are all here because you are quick... and you think that makes you special. But I have brought some news for you through time from a wise man named Landor who lived nearly five hundred years ago. Quickness, he once said, is not one of man's great qualities. On the contrary, it is the talent most open to suspicion by the rest of the world. The liar has it; the cheat has it; the con-man has it. Education does not give it and valuable reflection takes away from it. Quickness is seldom a partner with virtue, and morality seems to get along just fine without it. they find it in the gambling casinos and gaming arcades, and even the mad retain it when they have lost all else. A quick mind can easily become a disorderly mind and doom can easily fall on the individual that takes personal amusement from it or relies too heavily upon it.>