The training hall was one of the biggest rooms in the camp so far. Giant spans of wall with wide distances between them — you almost couldn’t see the far end unless you genuinely squinted for it. The ceiling architecture was a technical, maze-like structure that caught the brutal overhead lighting at every possible angle and sent it back down without mercy.

We’d all walked in there sheepishly — all fifty of us from F-Division — mostly expecting something that matched the word ’training room.’ Weapons. Equipment. A dojo at the very minimum. Something that announced itself.

The room was empty. Another building in this camp that hadn’t bothered to live up to its label. The only thing breaking the emptiness was a man waiting for us near one of the walls — broad shoulders, arms that had clearly been through a consistent relationship with a gym, leaning back with one hand working a steel comb through his hair and the other tossing a baton repeatedly into the air and catching it without looking. His eyes were behind a pair of sunglasses, apparently working in service of whatever aura he was cultivating with the posture.

The weirdos never ended.

"Get into your positions, cadets." Quiet voice. Hoarse. The specific kind of tone that didn’t need volume because the consequences of ignoring it were implied.

We arranged ourselves into something that resembled a formation — five in a row, six in some, nobody entirely sure what the correct version looked like. He studied our arrangement for a moment, then pushed off the wall and moved toward us.

"My name is S.K Pokey. BHA Camp trainer. 32. Uncontracted permanent staff." The baton continued its arc in his other hand. "You’ll call me Mr Pokey."

"Mr Pokey?!" Malik apparently hadn’t made the decision to say that out loud until it was already out. "That’s a terrible name!"

He was still laughing when Pokey’s gaze found him and stayed there. The laugh died. The silence that replaced it was thorough.

"I mean..." Malik adjusted. "Yeah. Got it. Mr Pokey."

Pokey held the look for another second, then moved on.

"Every examination year, I keep my assignment simple. Make sure every student under my guidance receives the required training. Your success in the examination is never a reflection of mine — my success depends entirely on whether any of you mess up my paycheck."

He bounced the baton lightly against his palm. "Now. You are all, as you’re probably aware, the world’s most unacceptable category of student. F-rankers. Cripples." He said that last word with a particular deliberateness, like he’d chosen it specifically and wasn’t apologising for it.

"You are a living irritant. And if there’s one real reason you’re here, it’s not to chase some dream about becoming a hunter. You’re here to set a legacy. To prove to the world — and specifically to me — that you’re more than everything they’ve already decided you are."

I couldn’t determine whether that was meant to be rude or motivational. His face wasn’t helping. His expression had been sitting at neutral since he walked over, like a factory setting he hadn’t adjusted in years.

The blonde-haired girl two rows ahead raised her hand.

"I’m not finished." He didn’t even look at her.

She lowered it.

"Your training here breaks into three sections. Tactical intelligence. Physical skill. Adaptability. Mastering all three is the criteria that has consistently made the difference during every trial season I’ve been involved in. It doesn’t guarantee success — nothing does. But it’s the closest framework anyone’s found. What actually determines your result in the end—"

"Can we skip to the actual training?" I lowered my eyes at him. "Get to the point and get this over with."

The room went noticeably quieter.

Our eyes held for what was probably longer than it was comfortable for either of us. His expression hadn’t moved. Mine had settled into a frown, and I was already running a quiet reassessment of the decision to interrupt him.

"Alright then." He gave one nod. The kind of nod that was agreeing to something other than what was said out loud. "Let’s begin."

He gripped the baton with both hands and began compressing it — squeezing it until it lost its shape entirely, continuing for another ten seconds while the material changed under his hands. When he opened them, he was holding a ball. Small, dense, fitted to the curve of his palm.

Matter restructuring. Either that or some variant of rubber manipulation — the ability to reconfigure the shape of malleable materials into whatever form was needed. He gave the ball a quick downward bounce. It came up almost immediately, and he caught it without effort.

"First training is simple." He said, bouncing it once more. "Take this ball from my possession. You win."

The murmuring started immediately. Quiet, but not quiet enough — the collective reaction of fifty people who had just been told that the preparation for a high-stakes multi-trial examination was going to begin with a game of keep-away. Side glances. Someone near me made a face that said ’is this real.’ I understood the face.

But Pokey’s expression didn’t shift. His expression never shifted.

"It’s an individual test. You all have tree minutes each." He raised the ball. "If you can’t get it, the penalty is two laps around the camp."

Two laps around a camp this size was essentially circling a small city twice. That put things in a different register. Suddenly, swallowing whatever pride was in the way and going for the ball sounded considerably more attractive.

"You." He pointed past me, arm extended. "Come up."

I had already started moving.

"Not you." He said, arm still out. "The one behind you."

Malik. He was standing directly behind me, head tilted back at the ceiling lighting, performing general obliviousness.

"You." Pokey’s voice came up a level. Enough to drag Malik’s attention down from the ceiling. "You didn’t hear me the first time?"

Malik’s walk to the front was slow and deliberate, eyes tracking the ball as it bounced. His timer started without announcement — we all understood it had.

Whatever strategy he’d assembled quietly on the way up was difficult to read, because he opened with a walk rather than a rush, which either meant he was thinking several steps ahead or he was buying time to think at all.

When he was a foot away, he swept his leg out — going for Pokey’s hand rather than the bouncing ball itself. Smart read. Except Pokey’s hand moved up with a reflex that had no business being that fast — dropping simultaneously to collect the ball in the same motion. Malik tried to slap it loose from the new grip and missed again, the arm going over empty air.

He shifted to kicks, which seemed to be where his confidence lived. Against Pokey, it registered as slow. Imprecise. And Pokey kept moving out of each one without leaving his general position on the floor — shifting over every attack, feet barely relocating, like his upper body had been given a separate and much faster operating system.

A minute had passed before Malik pulled back to get his breathing in order.

"Losing steam already?" Pokey asked.

Malik was still catching up to the oxygen situation. "That’s not fair. You’re supposed to go easy on us."

"I am, actually." Pokey let a sigh through. "It’s disappointing, honestly. If you’re this limited now, how are you going to stand up in the trials?"

"Shut up—!"

First time I’d seen Malik actually provoked. He usually operated on the other end of that dynamic, which made it oddly satisfying to watch him go fully committed on a series of kicks that connected with nothing. Three minutes elapsed. No close call. No contact with the ball.

Pokey called someone else next. Not me.

That repeated for the next two hours. Each person went up, took their three minutes, and came back having learned something that their expression hadn’t fully processed yet. I used every cycle to study him instead of watching whoever was currently failing.

One pattern kept appearing: he hadn’t moved his feet. Not once. Not meaningfully. His arms were quick enough to compensate for almost every angle — dodging through swings at a pace that looked comfortable, like he had time he wasn’t using. But his legs stayed where they were.

Every single person in this room had tried to work through the arms and been denied. Malik had been the only one to clock that the legs were the actual target, but he’d rushed it before he had the timing.

The legs weren’t thick. Not the spaghetti-build that would fold from one good hit, but narrow enough that breaking his balance was genuinely achievable if the approach was right. Get the stance disrupted, and the arms couldn’t compensate fast enough for everything at once.

That was the read.

I’d spent two hours arriving at it.

"You." The finger came out, pointing at me. Last person in the group. "You’re next."