Chapter 553 | Pride Doesn’t Run Laps

Chapter 553: 553 | Pride Doesn’t Run Laps

She kissed my cheek, squeezed my hand once, and went to stretch beside Belle. Belle tilted the laptop toward her, and the two of them bent over the screen together, and I heard Naomi whisper "Oh my god, she bit you there?" with far too much delight.

Jordan lay face down on the grass ten meters away with his arms flat at his sides. Javier knelt next to him holding a stopwatch, timing something that I suspected was Jordan’s will to live.

"He’s been like that since five-forty," Javier said. "His heart rate is fine, I checked, he’s just choosing this."

"Wake me when the Captain is dead," Jordan said into the dirt.

Hikaru stood alone near the equipment shed with her arms folded, her black hair perfect and her uniform pressed sharper than anything Misato owned. Her red eyes went to the hoodie, then to my shoulder, and then back to my face. She gave me the smallest nod I’ve ever seen a human being produce, a quarter inch of movement that meant you’re alive and I don’t want details.

The pale blue ring in my skull warmed by a single degree. I’ll take it.

Blair Davenport arrived at five fifty-nine, which for her counts as late, and she walked onto the field with the air of a woman who had slept four hours and blamed me for all of them. She wore a fitted black training jacket zipped to the throat, and her short red hair was still damp at the ends. She carried a steel thermos that probably cost more than my scholarship.

She saw the hoodie from twenty meters out.

The thermos lid popped off by itself and spun across the grass. Steam boiled out of the opening in a white column.

"That isn’t yours to wear," she said.

"It was a gift from someone, Davenport."

"Ayame doesn’t give gifts to anybody." Her ice-blue eyes went to my neck and stayed there. "She gives orders and she gives laps, and she has never given anyone anything else in nine years."

"Then I suppose I’m the exception."

Her ears went pink at the edges. The grass under her boots browned in a neat circle about a foot wide. She turned her back on me so fast her jacket snapped, then walked to the far end of the line and stood there radiating heat into the morning fog.

The ninth ring at the edge of my skull flickered red, then white, then red again, like a neon motel sign deciding whether it had a vacancy.

Misato walked onto the field at six exactly.

Her uniform was spotless and her ponytail was pulled so tight it looked surgical. Her tablet sat in the crook of her arm. There was no crease on her cheek, no blush, and no evidence that she had been sobbing my name into her own pillow seven hours earlier. She looked at her squad, all eight of us, with the flat green stare that made first-years reconsider their career paths.

The bite mark on her collarbone, dark purple and shaped exactly like my teeth, sat in plain view above her collar because she had refused to wear anything that covered it.

Belle saw it and made a noise like a teakettle. Naomi grabbed Belle’s arm to keep her from falling over.

"Good morning, Midnight Foxes," Misato said. "Yesterday you cleared a Tier Two with zero casualties and beat Sapphire’s projected time by nineteen minutes, and I’m proud of you."

Jordan lifted his head off the grass. "Is this a trap of some kind, Captain?"

"It’s absolutely a trap, Wayne." She tapped her tablet. "Pride doesn’t run laps, so today we run assault variations until lunch, starting with a warm-up."

She looked at me last.

"Monroe has double laps for disobeying a direct order to stay on the shelf. I said this on the ferry, and I’m saying it again in front of witnesses."

"Understood, Captain, double laps it is."

"I haven’t finished talking yet, field lead."

She lifted her free hand. Green light ran down her arm like water and spilled out of her palm, and five Misatos peeled out of the air beside her in a line. They looked sharper than her clones had ever looked before. The Gold buff had filled them in, every edge crisp, every ponytail tight, and every single one of them was holding a stopwatch.

Javier dropped his notebook in the grass.

"Five of them at once," he whispered. "And they look solid, with no flicker anywhere on their edges."

"Each of my clones will pace you," Misato said. "Any clone that passes you adds another lap to your total."

The five clones turned their heads toward me in perfect unison and clicked their stopwatches.

Belle started laughing so hard she had to put her laptop down. Naomi buried her face in Belle’s shoulder. Even Hikaru’s mouth moved a millimeter, which for her is a full stand-up special.

Blair stared at the clones and then at Misato’s collarbone, and the fog around her turned into steam.

"That isn’t a training method," Blair said. "That’s harassment with a stopwatch."

"That’s command authority, Davenport. Get in line for your own laps, because you’re running regular ones today."

I walked to the start line on the track. The five clones jogged after me and arranged themselves in a half circle at my back, and one of them leaned in close to my ear. She smelled exactly like the shower.

"Your cardio had better be acceptable today," the clone murmured, in a voice that was very much the Captain and very much not the Captain.

I took off running before I could think about what that meant.

The first lap went fine. B-rank Endurance turns four hundred meters into a light jog, and Misato’s buttermilk was still sitting warm in my blood. The clones ran beside me in a loose pack, and nobody passed me, and I started to feel pretty good about life.

On the second lap a clone drifted up on my left shoulder. On the third, two of them did it. By the fifth lap they were trading positions around me like a pit crew, pushing the pace up a notch every time I settled in, and my lungs started filing complaints with the management.

Then I had an idea, which is always where my troubles begin.

Copper Legion Split pulled at my ribs like a fish hook, and a second Jace popped out of the air at my side mid-stride. He was fully clothed this time, thank god, in the same jeans and the same stolen hoodie, and he grinned at me with my own face and kept running.

Then the shared senses kicked in, and I felt both sets of lungs burning at once. Both sets of calves screamed together, and the track doubled under my feet, and I almost ate grass at forty kilometers an hour.

"Oh, this is so much worse," both of us said together.

From the infield, Belle’s voice carried across the whole field.

"Is that two of you right now? I’m adding a new column for this."

"Clone laps don’t count toward your total, Monroe," Misato yelled from the center line, and her real voice cracked at the end because she was trying very hard not to laugh.

My clone looked at me and I looked at my clone. We had the same thought at the same time, and he peeled off and sprinted straight at the nearest Misato clone to tackle her into the grass.

She sidestepped him without looking up from her stopwatch and tapped him once in the chest. He burst into green sparks, and the whole pack of clones clicked their stopwatches together.

"That’s plus two laps for you, field lead," all five of them said.

Jordan rolled onto his back on the infield and stared up at the sky.

"I’m so glad I’m not with anyone on this squad," he said.

I kept running.