Adapt (I)

TJR Garcia © 2020

SCARLET

“Life is not worth living.” I pout to Phoenix.

He gazes back with sad, concerned eyes, as if he knows exactly what I just said.

“It’s true,” I continue. “I mean, I get up, go to training, come home, go to school, study, sleep, repeat.”

These are the kinds of pointless conversations I have with Phoenix whenever I don’t want to do something. After coming home from training with Trent, I had stripped down, taken a shower, and settled back in bed, awaiting the fresh hell this morning would bring after my agreement with Boe yesterday.

Phoenix tilts his head, prompting me to go on with my rant.

I roll over to stare at my paint chipped ceiling. “I mean, my one purpose is to hunt and kill those...monsters, but once that is done, then what?” I sigh, pulling up the blankets a bit further. “I will never have a respectable job, a family-”

Phoenix jumps and gives one short bark at my bedroom door.

“Existentialism isn’t going to solve anything.”

I grind my teeth, a thousand insults on the tip of my tongue. Instead, I say, “You clearly haven’t got a grasp of existentialism. There is no point in solving anything, as there is no point to anything.” I pull the blankets over my head, and Phoenix burrows under with me.

Then I realize something that really should have dawned on me from the beginning.

“How did you get into my freaking house?” The blankets muffle my words.

“You don’t need to be a genius. I popped out one of the fly screens in your front windows. You should really lock your windows.”

I growl before coming to my next major realization this morning.

I am only wearing underwear.

I had planned on getting dressed when Boe knocked like any other ordinary person.

I don’t think my eyes have ever stretched so wide. “F-” was all I could get out. In the back of Phoenix’s throat, a low growl starts to bubble.

“Are you Ok-”

“Get out! Get out of my house.”

“You said training at eight. It’s eight.”

“I will meet you out the front.” I shout, desperate to get him out of the immediate vicinity.

“Alright.” He mumbles reluctantly before I hear a chain of footsteps followed by the distinct sound of the front door closing.

I let out the breath that I had been holding. Phoenix pops his head out from under the covers.

And so it begins.

~

“Thank you.” Boe flashes an overly sweet smile at the blonde barista serving behind the counter at the town’s only café, Coffee Shell. I’m not entirely sure what the pun in the name is, but I do know that they make terrible coffee.

Boe takes one sip and verifies that.

“So, at HQ all you do is walk around town, grabbing cups of coffee?” I ask as we begin to mosey toward to beach.

He takes another gulp of the worst coffee he has ever tasted. “Not exactly. But we are entitled to one cup of strong coffee a day. It keeps us alert.”

I run my tongue over my teeth. “Look, it has taken us half an hour to walk all the way here and get a coffee. We may as well turn around and head back.”

He wraps his hands around the cup trying to warm them. “What for?”

I pull down my grey hoody’s sleeves over my hands. “I don’t know.” I sarcastically wonder. “I think the people of earth call it ‘school’.”

He screws his nose up. “If you were at HQ, you would be done with school by now, to a university level. I have a Bachelor of Electronic Engineering.”

My jaw drops for a second. A University degree?!

I gather the bits of my mind that have just been blown. “Okay, so I would be the equivalent of a helper monkey at HQ. Awesome.”

He chuckles to himself. “In a way.”

I stare daggers at him.

We walk in silence for a while. When we reach the sand, Boe throws the nearly full coffee in a nearby bin. “So, here are the rules for the next month.” He begins to stretch his arms. “No school. Full time training. No friends will visit. We eat and train together. Other than today, you will report for breakfast every morning, at seven hundred. A snack at ten hundred. Lunch at twelve hundred. Another snack at fifteen hundred-”

“What are we, in the freaking army?!”

“Worse. Dinner will be at eighteen hundred, and the rest is your day.” He bends to touch his toes.

I stare for a second; waiting for him to burst out in hysterics, telling me that it is one big joke.

He sets his feet apart and stretches over to one side. “What?”

I drop my chin. “You’re kidding, right?”

He shakes his head, only flat seriousness in his eyes.

I turn around and begin to walk back into town. This was a stupid idea. Why did I even agree to this? Doing this isn’t going to get rid of him. It is only going to make things worse. The best solution would be just ignoring him.

“What are you doing?”

“Going to school. Dickweed.” I say the last word under my breath.

“No out, remember!”

I flip him the bird over my shoulder.

Boe jogs up behind me. I roll my eyes but turn to face him.

He rests his hands on my shoulders. “Okay, it sounds like crap. I get it. But it’s only a month. If you do it and you still decide to stay, then I will leave and never come back. But I think you’ll like it more than you realize.” He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “And the truth is, I-we-think that you will be an incredibly valuable asset to Head Quarters.”

I watch his dark irises through narrowed eyes. They are so serious that it’s hard not to believe him.

’I will leave and never come back...′ my mind reels at the promise of Boe leaving town. If I walk away now then I may miss the only chance to get rid of him. “Fine.” I say, but the word tastes sour.

“Good.” He says. His hands linger a moment too long on my shoulders before he turns and strides back to the sand. I join Boe with heavy feet. “Okay. So here is the deal. Today is testing day, to see how fit you are-how much you need to improve. I will base the next of the two weeks on today’s effort. From today on I only expect more, not less.” He orders.

I nod formally, and then I bite my lip to stop my smile.

He glares at me. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing!” A chuckle escapes my nose. He raises his eyebrows at me. “I just haven’t seen you so serious.”

Boe blinks at me. “This is serious, Scarlet. We are here to kill one of the most deadly races on the earth. Do you think that this is a joke?”

He is right, of course. I try to suppress my giggles.

Boe runs me through drills of sprints and quick combat. He tests my core, upper body and lower body strength. He does all of this with his eyebrows knitted together. When I ask how I am doing, he either barks another order or completely ignores me.

After all of that, he blind folds me and tests my secondary senses.

“Why the hell do I have to wear a blind fold?” I am a bit sceptical of depriving myself of any of my senses.

“Everyone relies on their sight, but it can be blinding in a way. Sometimes your brain will overlook things if it hasn’t registered it through your sense of sight, which can open you up to vulnerability. Plus, there maybe situations where you are blinded-it’s night time, or someone has gauged your eyes out, which means you have to rely on your other senses-”

I wave my hand in the air. “Yeah, yeah, I get it.” I wrap the black material around my head, making sure there is no way I can see through. “Okay, what now?”

“React.”

“What-”

Boe’s arm wraps around my neck, pulling me backward. Without thinking, I thrust forward and flip his entire body over mine, landing him squarely on his back. I smile widely.

Boe doesn’t say anything; he just pulls one of my feet from underneath me. I wobble, but I don’t fall. When I steady myself, I take few steps back. I hear the crunch of sneakers so before he can make contact, I throw out a solid roundhouse, which connects with his rib cage.

After a few seconds of silence, I pull the blindfold down. I find Boe, holding his side.

“Are you okay?”

He tries to mask a groan. “Yep.” He straightens and stretches. “You winded me, that’s all.”

I bite my lip to disguise a smirk. “So, what next?”

He winces. “That’s it as far as testing.”

I narrow my eyes, not oblivious to the specification of ‘as far as testing’. “Now what?”

I can see the pain begin to subside as his face relaxes. He is finally healing. “Well, now we have to train you in interior decorating.”

I tilt my head to the side. “What?”