Legionnaires

 

By: James Lee

 

Disclaimer: None of these characters except Anna belong to me.

 

Part 2

            Usagi and some of the other girls were in a circle waiting their turn on the obstacle course. It was they’re second week of training and so far things had been going well for her. Granted there were some rough spots. The drill instructors were one. Three large men who always expressed their dislike of women in general, foreign women in particular. Their one goal in life seemed to be to make everyone else’s a living hell. She also had some trouble with drill and ceremony; but Usagi could now do an about face without tripping over her own feet. The physical fitness training hadn’t had been as challenging as she had first thought. Granted it was still hard, the drill instructors had made sure of that, just not as hard as Usagi thought it was going to be. {Guess, all that fighting and running to school did amount to something.}

As the girls waited their turn they started to talk. “So what’s Chicago like Rally?”

            Rally looked up at the dark skin girl next to her. “Well it’s a pretty big city. Unfortunately, me and May usually saw the bad part of it. Still it was home.”

            “Home.” The girl sighed and looked down towards the letter in her hands. Usagi caught on to this.

            “Jeez Nadia, not another hate gram from your folks.” Nadia sighed and nodded.

            Nadia had arrived shortly after Ranko and was bunkmate with Mai. Named after her great grandmother, Nadia Raltigue came from a long line of French pacifist. Needless to say her family wasn’t too please with her joining the legion. Two other girls showed up after her completing the squad. One was a German girl by the name of Heidi, who got tired of her mountain home and went militant. Then there was a Russian girl with strange birthmarks named Anna. Like Ranko, she didn’t talk about herself, but was allot friendlier. Most Just figured she was shy because of the stripes on her body. 

            “Well don’t worry about it, that’s their problem.” Said Usagi as she turned to see Ranko getting lined up with Mia at the obstacle course start line. No one knew just where the red head came from, although it was accepted that she was from Japan. Ryuunosuke did say that she seemed familiar, like she had seen her before. If so that placed her from somewhere in Tokyo. It was unfortunate that they couldn’t look her name up on the Internet or something.

Not that looking up Ranko’s name would do much good. Most were of the assumption that Ranko had made up her name prior to joining. Nadia had confirmed that Ranko’s last name Foret was French. When you mixed the Japanese and French you got ‘Wild child of the forest’. Of course Usagi couldn’t say much as she had done the same thing. She just wished she had pick something better. The squad got a real kick when they found out Usagi Lapin translated to ‘Bunny Rabbit’. “Hmm, I wonder were Ranko comes from.”

            “Ranko doesn’t come from anywhere.” Said May. “She was made in Paris, from the body parts of dead fashion models and Napoleon’s brain!”

            “Stop that! That’s mean.” Whined Usagi, she had been dealing with these types of rumors for some time. Since Ranko refused to talk about herself there had been several of such wild stories. In fact, Anna was the only one who didn’t come up with any of these weird tales. Others included that Ranko was a mutant in hiding, that she was a government built robot, or that she was a test bed for combat drugs. It didn’t help that the girl didn’t seem to know the words second or failure. No matter what it was, Ranko always came in first. First at Drill and ceremony, first at physical training, first at first aid; the list went on. This in effect made several of the other girls in the squad jealous.

            “Oh come on Usagi. We’re just joking.” Said Sammy. “But honestly, how can you stand her? I mean this is the same girl that tells you to quit everyday.”

            “Wellll. I can be a pretty good judge of character and I think that Ranko is really a nice girl who’s just real shy and insecure right now.”

            “Nice?”

            “Shy and insecure?”

            “Oh come on, Usagi.” Said Ryuunosuke. “When has she ever given a damn about you?”

            “Well there was that on time that Mai offered to teach me martial arts.” The others blinked at Usagi. “Ranko pulled me aside and told me to be careful.”

            Rally rolled her eyes. “Oh that’s allot.”

            “She said that even though she was better than Mai, that Mai was trained to kill.”

            “So what did Mai have to say about that?”

            “Nothing.”

            “So she didn’t confirm it?” asked May.

            “No, but she didn’t deny it either. Spooky huh?”

            “All right, so where do you get the shy and insecure part?” asked Ryuunosuke.

            “Well, this one time I saw her in the shower…” May jumped in.

            “You mean she does take showers?”

            Sammy rolled her eyes. “Of course she takes showers! She’s just to high and mighty to take them with everyone else.”

            “It’s not that.” Snapped Usagi.

            “Then what is it?” asked Rally.

            “Well one night I was on fire watch and I heard the shower going. I knew it must have been Ranko so I decided to peek on her. When I did she…”

            “…was exploring her body?” Usagi glared at May. It was amazing how perverted her teammates could get.

            “No! Not everyone’s a pervert like you spore.”

            May was about to reply, but was cut off by Rally. “Well go on.”

            Usagi looked away to see Ranko come first yet again. “Well she just looked so…so sad.”

“Miss Foret, sad?”

“Yeah, like…like the water reminded her of something she lost.”

 

To be continued?