"Jaeger R1_1-E29-SS," she started, " I present to you your charges."

Rhett's eye swiped through the room before going focusing on the two teenagers.

Rhett's eye swept across the room, lingering on the two teenagers, and a bitter sigh escaped his lips.

'They really had to put me with the only two marginals of the promotion,' he thought.

The weight of their gaze—already judging, yet expectant—sent a surge of frustration through him. He didn't ask for this in the first place. Why add to his punishment. He was already presenting the troubles they would cause to him.

A discreet lough escaped from his guide. He gritted his teeth, she was laughing at him. The entire situation must be nothing more than a cruel prank distracting her from her usual tasks. She walked toward the boy holding the weapon. He had delicate almost feminine features, with soft frozen blond hair falling gracefully on his bronzed forehead. He would've been qualified as handsome, if it wasn't for his eyes. Behind his bloody iris glowed a light of madness that gave him an unsettling aura.

"This young man here is Skyler."

The latter lowered his weapon and greeted him with a friendly wave.

"Glad to see our mentor isn't an old grey-old man."

The hunter didn't know how to respond, so instead he turned to the girl beside him. A bit taller than his companion, he could barely see more than dark circles behind a heavy curtain of coal hair. The rest of her face, from the beginning of the bridge of her nose to the beginning of her neck, was hidden by a thick metal mask. She didn't do a single movement as she stared at him.

"And this young lady is Ash," finished the woman.

Even their names seemed to come from a badly written teenage fiction. Ash raised her hands and made quick movements, it took him a second to understand she was communicating, he hadn't practiced SEE since he became a hunter.

"What is your name?" she asked his guide.

The woman's lips curled up, "That is confidential, but you can call me Emylia."

That was when Rhett realized he hadn't thought about asking her name. Or anything concerning her. Now that he was thinking about it, he never asked about anything except what concerned him. He knew he should feel bad and question his egotistical attitude, but then again, he didn't care.

"Well I am going to call for a team of healers to take care of the wounded. Jaeger, I will leave you with your charges."

Emylia took a last look at the three of them before walking toward the exit.

"Wait!" called Rhett. "Shouldn't someone address the mentors of the wounded?"

With the strange sight of his new students, he almost forgot about the rampage they caused and the recruits they wounded. Some of them were starting to wake up, moving and moaning on the floor.

"Of course," she responded. "You will."

She smiled with a malicious expression on her scared face, "After all you are their mentor."

°°°

"Dammit" swore out loud the hunter.

He had spent the next three hours organizing the repairs and talking to the mentors of the injured. He had immediately dismissed his students and made them wait alone in a confined room.

"They did it on purpose, those sneaky foxes," he continued punching the wall.

The only thing it brought him was a loud pain in his knuckles and a look of alarmedness on the nearby nurse tending the new recruits. The Jaeger took a deep breath.

'Calm down,' he thought. 'This is simply a test.'

Yes, the board didn't have the time or the interest in playing jokes. They were teaching him a lesson, testing his limits. He must face them without flinching. He grabbed his coat hanging on one of the metal chairs of the infirmary, and pushed violently the door. It loudly slammed against the wall.

"I battled against countless Infected, worked under the harshest Jaeger of my generation and escaped death on multiple occasions," he said out loud. "This is a very simple task in comparison."

This affirmation had the effect of calming him down a little. Now that the formalities were settled, he could focus on his new students, particularly how he could tame them, but for that, he had no worries."

'How hard could this be?'

When Rhettt opened the door of the confinement, the two of them hadn't moved, still sitting on the bench. They seemed so still and calm it was difficult to imagine what they did earlier. He cleared up his throat and entered the white cell. They stayed motionless, but their eyes followed him as he came across the room approaching them.

"I don't care why you did that." started the hunter breaking the heavy silence. "That's my first point. This is your business and I don't want to meddle in. Just keep yourself out of trouble. You are both old enough to fight with your peers. No?"

A small scoff came from the blond student. The aftermath of his fight had muted the wild glow of his eyes, but he still remained unsettling.

"We can tell that you forgot how it was to be fifteen."

That was true, but he didn't need to know.

"Secondly," said the Jaeger, changing the subject into a less personal one.

His focus shifted on the girl.

"Ash."

She raised her head as he called her.

'What a mess,' he thought.

She looked frail and sick now that she wasn't covered in blood, and hiding behind her companion's shadow.

"Can you speak or not?"

He saw Skyler tensing in the corner of his vision, as he asked the girl. At his surprise, she nodded and took out a small white board from her coat pocket. She scribbled down a few words before showing it to him.

"Yes, but I prefer to communicate by writing or signing."

"Is there an important reason behind this?" pressed her mentor. "One that could affect your performance in the team?"

"If she didn't write it down then that means that there isn't," interrupted the boy.

Rhett's head turned to face the teenager. "Did I talk to you?" he asked with a firm voice.

"No but..."

"No, but. No, maybe. No excuse," recited the hunter as he emphasized the nos. "I want a simple response: yes or no. Stop wasting your breath on an explanation that no one asked."

Skyler stayed frozen overwhelmed by his harsh response but soon opened his mouth to respond. Rhett narrowed his eye, and the teenager quickly closed his mouth not without gritting his teeth. The hunter focused back his attention on the girl. She shook her head.

"Nothing that would impact our team."

Rhett felt she wasn't completely telling the truth but he let it slide. He didn't need her to tell him directly. He could investigate on his own. Skyler had scouted closer to Ash with a relieved expression. Rhett suddenly became aware of their proximity and their complicity.

'Please, tell me I won't have to deal with a teenage romance.'

He doubted he could handle this on top of his new mission.

"As you two have already guessed, I am your mentor. You will call me instructor R1_1-E29-SS, during our time together."

The two shared a look with a strange expression on their faces.

'What is it now? Did I say something bad?' he wondered.

Ash raised her hands trying to form his title but abandoned mid-way.

"Can we call you by your name?" she asked with her little board. Her writing was oddly beautiful compared to her state.

Rhett thought about it for a second. The board had judged him to be inhumane. Would they see it with a good eye authorizing his students to call him by his real name?

"You two can call me Rhett in private," he responded.

She seemed to be pleased and wiped the surface of her board.

"Well now that things are settled I want to see what you two know about the organization and the Infected. I will organize my lessons concordly..." he stopped for a second looking at the two teenagers.

'I don't know how to do it.' He realized feeling an unease in his chest. 'I don't know how to teach. How do you even talk to teenagers either way?'

"We didn't have the time to learn as much as the other recruits. They found us two weeks ago during a campaign in Arizona," responded Skyler stretching with a thoughtful expression. "They told us that one of the best hunters of division one volunteered to be our mentor. We were surprised to see you weren't this old."

'Those bloody bastards,' cursed silently the Jaeger.

The board has schemed this for weeks, he never had the choice. Now he was forced to play along.

"That is right," he lied. "I want to make you two, irreproachable hunters that will fight against humanity's biggest threat: the Infected."

His two students shared a small look. They didn't look very excited by this perspective.

"They were willing to leave us on our own until they realized we both had red eyes," wrote Ash, her hands slightly trembling. "Then they said that we were fit to belong with them. Does that mean we are saving humanity while leaving children to die?"

"Ah yes, your eyes," exclaimed Rhett, ignoring the last bit of her sentence. "Around the same time the mutants appeared the government noticed that a second mutation–red eyes– occurred giving the ability to see the core–the vital point of Infected. Those who possess those eyes have a natural advantage to fight those monsters. "

"Did losing one of your eyes affect your ability?" asked Skyler.

The question was genuine, but Rhett still tensed in front of it.

"No," he answered curtly. "It doesn't. My vision field is slightly more restrained but I overcompensated with additional training."

"You didn't need to explain, a yes or a no would have sufficed," smiled Skyler proud of his response.

The hunter decided he had enough of his childish games.

"Skyler, go on the floor."

"What?" he asked, unsure about what he heard.

"Go on the floor and do plank crawls until I tell you to stop."

His student looked at his companion. Ash just nodded at him. The blond teenager sighed and executed his orders. Rhett made a mental note to himself: he must uncover what power holds Ash over the bratty blond. He couldn't let a student be the one holding authority on Skyler.

"Now Ash, can you tell me what is the hierarchy in our organization?"

She nodded and scribbled down on her board. At her feet, Skyler was starting to pant at his twentieth movement. After a few minutes she raised the white plastic where she had drawn a pyramid of five floors, each one representing a division.

On the lower part were the mentees, then the neophytes, the executives, the elites and the supras. She even added the board on the very top, and scribbled on the last two sections: confidential.

"Yes, you are right but you forgot to add the division X," he corrected taking the pen from her.

He added in bold letters Originator next to the pyramid with a long rectangle divided in two, completing the chart.

"Those people do not possess the sight but they are still considered as entire members of our organization. Without them we wouldn't be able to operate. There are two different kinds of people in division X. Do you know them?"

"The healers and the technicians right?" intervene Skyler with a breathless voice.

"Do ten additional push-ups I didn't authorize you to speak."

Thankfully, the teenager didn't protest as he did his additional workout. Rhett turned around and washed the board before giving back to the girl. He waited a minute before looking at his sweating student.

"I assume you two already encountered the Infected."

"Oh yes, we did," muffled Skyler. "They attacked our hometown one month earlier."

"But you said that you joined the order two weeks ago." frowned the hunter.

"Yes, before we had to stay in the hospital, I was in a coma," continued Ash.

Her eyes became sharper. Rhett's eyes went down to her mask. He knew what to expect behind the black metal.

"Well then I figure that's it for today."

"Already?" cried out the blond teenager falling on the floor. His face was flushed as he rolled on his back.

"We talked for less than twenty minutes!" protested the girl with angry movements.

"Well you two would have enjoyed three hours more of lecture and training if you hadn't caused trouble earlier," he responded dismissing them with a quick hand gesture.

Their faces turned dark. Skyler seemed to hold back another protest, but he stayed silent. It seemed that the hunter's punishment had worked.

"You two have to go back to your dormitories. You must know the way. I will wait for you in this room tomorrow at five sharp," he ordered already half outside. "If one of you is late then the other will have to do the same punishment as today."

As the door closed he heard Skyler groan, "I take back what I said, I would've preferred an old gramp."