Here Be Sexist Vampires(51)

David had decided that he wanted his outlet to be his palms, not his eyes, so he was working on that and doing excellently – Reuben had weakened his power in advance to ensure that David’s blast couldn’t do any more than give his victim a minor shock, and he practiced mostly on Denny who said he would happily practice with his own powers in his own time so he could help David today. Denny looked out for David a lot, which was good as I came to realize that David was very nervous of his power and by virtue of his young age.

It turned out that Reuben had a little trouble with controlling whether he strengthened someone’s gift or whether he weakened it, but by the end of the session he had a better hang of it. He was working toward increasing the degree to which he could affect someone’s gift and with being able to affect someone’s gift with minimal bodily contact as opposed to holding onto them for up to eight seconds.

Max and Harvey were hard work because both believed that they had nothing left to learn…So I paired them up, which they soon regretted. I first let Slap-head – he was back to that now that he was being a wanker – explore whether he could choose exactly what senses he wanted to affect (he didn’t believe this was possible until, one by one, I took each of his senses away and then left him to silently whine about it to the wall). It transpired that although cocky Harvey was able to send something zooming away with his telekinesis, he couldn’t make something come toward him, or rotate, or levitate so I allowed him to practice on a practically defenceless Slap-head. Slap-head of course stole every one of Harvey’s senses once he recovered his own just as payback.

Each time the recruits were successful in their attempts, I would give them a nod of approval, but after that would holler, ‘Again!’ And, to their credit, they did it over and over and over. I was tempted to loudly express how pleased I was with their efforts but I couldn’t afford to show any signs of compassion or kindness with these blokes as they would only view this as a weakness and start taking the piss. Coaches needed to have a tough exterior or they’d all end up being wankers again. Besides, as Max had said, they were big boys.
#p#分页标题#e#
By the end of the night, they were all exhausted…but also optimistic. Proud to be tired because they were proud of their efforts. I was actually proud of them too. I showed this by simply saying in a flat tone, “You did good. You worked hard. But it doesn’t end there. You’ve got goals to hit, don’t lose sight of them.” Then as motivation I made them a promise. “Once you meet those goals and can master the formations that I have in mind for you to learn, I’ll let you practice an attack on one of the other squads.”

Every one of them cheered. I knew that the other squads teased the newest recruits. It was tradition. It was part of the tough love of the place; soldier sense of humour was somewhat different. But it pissed these blokes off all the same, just as it would piss me off.

“Oh yeah I’ll send those shitheads flying through the air,” said Harvey. “Then we’ll see if still they want to throw eggs at my door.”

I smiled evilly. “Or…you could learn to levitate objects properly and levitate some eggs up to their doors…Tit for tat and all that. But you didn’t hear that suggestion from me.”

The recruits were all cooking up revenge plots as they left the arena, each sure to shout “See you tomorrow night, Coach.”

And they did see me tomorrow night. And the next night. And the next. Each time they put in maximum effort, never complained at the constant holler of ‘Again’, and the improvement was immediate. Jared never knew this as he never came to observe. Not even when I took them out to the rainforest to familiarise themselves with it and do some training there. As such, the night of the ‘bet’ came and went. Jared hadn’t mentioned it at all. Nor did he mention Antonio’s order that Jared and I lead the squad together during the attack on The Hollow. Antonio had assured me that Jared was aware of his ‘order’ so I’d decided that I would wait until Jared brought up the subject before we spoke of it. But he didn’t. He had barely mentioned anything to me. Toneless, polite greetings and farewells were all I got now.

“You’re going to have to tell me what’s going on because all the emotions swirling around that office are giving me migraines,” whined Fletcher one evening as he barged past me and into my apartment. As always looking like he had just stepped out of a fashion magazine. I felt even drearier now considering that I was waltzing around in my white fluffy robe and silk pyjamas.