BXBX NOVEL Chapter 199
One month, thirty days had passed since I joined the army and started my training, it seemed like such a short time, but it didn’t feel that way; Not when that bastard named Astryd was our lieutenant.
The amount and intensity of the training that he forced us to take were hellish at best, the only thing that kept me from stopping the training was my sister Nina and the feeling it gave me to see my capacities increase so significantly in such a short time.
I hate to admit it, but Lieutenant Astryd is a great instructor, in just one month of hellish torture at his hands and we became the best recruits on the entire base; some of us were even able to subjugate an esper of another squad in a matter of three moves or less.
Speaking of the devil, during the time I had spent near the man I began to notice abnormalities around him; although he already seemed a strange man to me at first.
It was due to my ability to feel the thermal changes in my environment that I began to notice all kinds of strange thermal fluxes in his person, as well as something that I can only describe as the presence of something else around him, for a moment I even thought that my thermal sensitivity was playing a bad joke on me, but I soon began to notice that at times Lieutenant Astryd seemed to direct his attention in the direction of the anomaly and was speaking to himself.
Unfortunately, I never found out more, because even if I ignored the ridiculous amount of training I had to go through each day, Lieutenant Astryd already seemed to give me a significant amount of attention so I didn’t think it was a good idea to act strangely.
At the end of the day, anything related to Lieutenant Astryd outside of the army had nothing to do with me, and my only relationship with him as an individual is that I was friends with his sister Claire who I spent a lot of time with.
Although it was a bit difficult to remain indifferent to the presence or existence of Lieutenant Astryd when Claire mentioned him all the time ... it was still difficult for me to understand why a girl as beautiful and cheerful as Claire would date such a shady character like Desmond especially because the man was a womanizer, but it took me only a couple of days to give up on making any comment about it as Claire was simply ignoring everything I said.
.....
In any case, today was the day our basic training would end and we would be officially considered part of the military system and those who were selected by Lieutenant Astryd would be fortunate to be part of the special squad under his charge.
Gathered in the training area, as usual, all the recruits lined up with great discipline waiting for Lieutenant Astryd to appear, a habit had already formed between us to present ourselves a couple of minutes before the arrival of our lieutenant to avoid being tortured by that smiling demon.
As if it had felt that the devil was summoned, he walked with chilling calm in our direction with a soft smile on his face, but having spent the last thirty days under his command, no one in this place believed that there was any kind of kindness behind that smile.
“Good morning ladies and gentlemen, I see that you have properly learned the meaning of punctuality and discipline ... hopefully you will not die in the first weeks of your new job”
A slight mischievous laugh escaped Lieutenant Astryd’s lips, but no one but himself found his joke to be funny; Everyone in this place was nervous enough about what being part of the military entailed and the mood only worsened after Desmond’s comments.
“As always none of you have a sense of humor... hell I’ll be nice to all of you for once and give you some advice.”
No one responded or made any expression about it, but it was clear that no one in this place expected any real advice from Lieutenant Astryd and that included me.
Completely indifferent to what we thought about him, Lieutenant Astryd continued in a deep voice and sincere feeling:
“Don’t be heroes, I can’t teach you to dodge a bullet that is approaching you at 800 meters per second or to survive an explosion from a fragmentation grenade at point-blank range, the decisions you make out there are the only thing that can give you a chance avoid this to a certain extent.
There is no lieutenant or captain who can always be by your side to tell you exactly what to do with each passing moment and you will have to depend on your judgment to survive out there so the only thing I can tell you ... ask you is not to try to be a hero.
To your parents and siblings, friends and lovers; being a hero will not make any of them regain what they will lose if one of you dies... so do your best not to die, the rest will come later. ”
Silence, an overwhelming silence followed from Lieutenant Astryd’s words and for the first time since I met him, I thought that maybe... just maybe he wasn’t the cruel and indifferent demon that he always seemed to be.
And at that moment without anyone having to say it out loud, I knew it, I could see it, the respect born in the depths of each person here present.
From our point of view, Lieutenant Astryd was always insanely strong, he was young and talented and it should have been very easy for him to earn our respect, but his cruelty and domineering contempt had always prevented us from seeing him that way.
But at this moment it was different, it was not just me, everyone here could feel how genuine Desmond’s words were, we could feel that he spoke not only as a person who cares for his loved ones but as someone who has felt the loss of them and it was that brief vulnerability that we saw in him that allowed us to identify with him for the first time and truly respect him.
“With that said, it’s time to know which of you managed to stand out enough to be accepted into my squad, when you hear your name take a step forward”