"The Brink"

The day had felt longer than ever. All of the stress built up until it finally caused him to collapse. Sean stumbled into his room, his back aching. A faint glimpse of sunlight shone through his dirty window, illuminating dust particles floating about. He coughed and collapsed onto his worn mattress.

A mattress was a quality item nowadays with the manufacturing industries collapsing left and right. It was better than sleeping under a blanket or towel on the floor like most citizens here did. Base Pirves wasn't luxury living. Whiplash was a wonderful faction. Whiplash had amazing goals, standards, and citizens- just this particular base, Base Pirves, wasn't exactly the richest place around. Whiplash officials would do their best to transport goods here to aid citizens, but it was hard when they are constantly raided.

Stretching out, Sean felt his aching back. If you wanted to join the Military Division here, they put you through some shit. It was understandable, though. They only wanted to have a strong and ready division prepared for combat. After all, raids were frequent.

A message came through the loudspeaker, which was unfortunately directly outside his room.

"MILITARY DIVISION FINAL ASSESSMENTS WILL BE HOSTED TOMORROW AT ELEVEN O'CLOCK. ALL RECRUITS ARE EXPECTED TO ATTEND."

Despite the blaring voice, sleep came easy to Sean.

Sleep came easy to the entirety of Base Pirves that night. The already quiet community was, for tonight, silent.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Sean adjusted his Military Division jacket. He had to ace this final assessment. He sure as hell wasn't going all the way through basic training again. The rotting floorboards creaked as he moved towards his door. He pushed it open with a squeak. Sunlight poured into his glazed over eyes. He shielded it with his hand and proceeded down the sidewalk of his block.

Passing quarters D3-N-5, he finally reached the training complex. Living quarters N-6 had been converted into an underground bunker for storage and training. Rumor had it that all fifteen Whiplash settlements had one. It was told Base Stronghold had the largest. It was known as a sprawling complex. It was told the hallways of the place were a labyrinth.

He moved into N-6 and proceeded down the stairs into the complex. All of the other recruits were already in shoulder to shoulder stance. Dreading the fact that he was late, he hurried into the line. "Well, Dwight, it's about time," heaved the training captain. "I apologize, sir."

"Apologies don't always fix these kind of situations, Dwight. You've left your entire squad waiting in an uncomfortable stance for fifteen minutes."

"Once again, I apologize."

"That doesn't matter. This is a repeat offense. You've "apologized" every single time. I'm beginning to think you don't care. Does training not matter to you, Dwight? Do you think you're above consequences?"

"No sir, I do not think I am above consequences."

"Well, that's good. In battle, there are consequences. If you can't listen to orders, you should be prepared to face them. The training captain smacked his fat lips. He turned to face the rest of the squad. Sean was amazing the walrus like blob could even stand at all. His neck fat was larger around than his hollow head.

"We'll start you all of with some basic drills. How about we run 'faces'? Yeah, let's run faces. Center yourselves! You two: Luther Khage and Sean Dwight, space out. You're too close."

Luther and Sean stared at each other for a moment. Luther's brown hair was flipped to one side. His face and expression were hardly visible through his thick circular glasses.