Unity

Six: Relentless

A/N: Since I was late with this chapter to begin with I stayed up to finish it. Hopefully two days' wait was worth it! I got to write something I've been excited about for a while, a flashback scene I thought I wouldn't include this early but it turned out it fit the plot of this chapter REALLY well. Also I had a lot of fun developing characters because I started a set of character specials. 

By Wednesday things were already steadily rolling downhill. It was after lunch so we were working on PreModern projectiles (arrows and spears). The girls were practicing long-distance archery while the boys and I were spear throwing. The Classroom was laid out like a suburban area and circular targets were moving around in front of us. Lynette and Mallory were on the roof.

Everything was going well until an arrow knocked the spear from my hand. I glared up at Mallory who tilted her head in a "what're you gonna do about it?" way. Aware of Lautrec's burning eyes I turned back to my throwing.

An arrow hit my shoulder. They were blunt but it hurt like hell. The spear I was throwing missed by a mile.

"Holloway, Mathis." Lautrec growled. "You're supposed to hit the targets."

"Yes sir." I mumbled.

Mallory turned back to her targets and hit them a few more times. She waited until Lautrec was adjusting Chance's form slightly to fire another one at me. That time I was ready. I spun the spear towards it and knocked the arrow aside.

Mallory snarled at me and whipped a set of three arrows into her sleek mechanical bow. She fired and I ducked one, then spun my spear sending the other two in opposite directions. However, while I was ducking she managed to fire two more. I swung my weapon up to meet them but lost grip slightly.

The spear was knocked from my grip and hit the ground with such force the metal tip snapped from the light black body.

"Mathis!" Lautrec shouted. Of course. NOW he notices. "That's a penalty, damaging Facility property. No resting period today, you will run laps!"

I groaned. This was not an uncommon occurrence. By mid-September we had almost developed a pattern. Mallory would do something to upset my routine during practice, I would run laps. Then I would retaliate by pranking her.

When she messed with my materials in explosives I dumped an entire pepper shaker into her smoothie. When she attached a device with a recording of my voice speaking very loudly to me while were stealth training I got Lynette to get me into Mallory's room and I stole all her socks. When she swapped my ingredients in Poisons so I had food poisoning for the entire weekend I stuck a large pink bow to the back of her head which she ended up not noticing all day.

While running I tried to think of something new to do after this most recent sabotage. I wanted to teach her a lesson but I didn't want to hurt her. She was still my teammate and still had a reason, despite never telling me. I just had to defend myself from her and coax out some sort of explanation for what was going on.

After training I took to hanging out with Chance and Lynette in the resting room. There was a fireplace and all the rugs and couches made it a great place to hang out. One day I came back from my laps and collapsed in my favorite chair, a large leather one that leaned back and had such a large seat I sunk deeply into it.

"Bad day?" Chance smirked from the couch that he lay all the way across on his stomach, reading another book. He was somehow able to get us all books, even though we got limited mail from the outside and books were rare to begin with.

"At least I have killer calves, the rest of you should run with me." I sighed as I pushed up the chair's footrest.

"Uh, no thanks, I get tired enough from normal training." Lynette scoffed. She was curled up in front of the fireplace in a large pile of pillows. She must have taken one from every single piece of furniture in the Facility.