Scout's Honor

[A_POINTED_STICK]

Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Down. My arms ache and the beating of my hearts fills my ears but I press on. I've been in the planche position for over an hour without pause. There are nine of us in a row counting out our presses. Three Thousand Nine Hundred Twenty Nine! I shout with the rest of them. Scout Sergeant has stood watching intently but without expression for the entire time. We continue our presses for another minute or so and finish the four thousand. We lower ourselves into the horizontal and then return to our feet.

 

Attention! He shouts and we go rigid. That concludes todays exercises. Clean off and hydrate. He waits for us to move but we've been doing this too long. Dismissed! We file off towards the balneary. A pretty Landsman unfortunate enough to get bath duties struggles to remove my weighted vest due to its heavy weight. I brush her hands away and remove it myself. The eighty pound garment bangs against the floor. Intimidated by my strength she no longer looks me in the face and begins to draw the bath. I finish removing my clothes and enter the warm water. She begins massaging the musculature of my shoulders. The knotted muscle loosens with the encouragement of her pisiform bone. She is humming as she works I realize. I can not make much of it, the psycho indoctrination robbed me of such sentimentality.

 

Although I am not interested I inquire her as to the song. In my experiences it is usually beneficial to display some degree of human quality when in the presence of humans. She smiles and responds with something I presume to be romantic and I smile back. It is forced but she can not tell. I ask her some other questions that I am not concerned with such as her name and how old she is. After she responds I make a mental note and inform her that she is skilled with her hands and will be my bath attendant. She smiles again and I rise from the water. I am amused by the way she avoids looking at my genitals. Her taboos seem strange to me. I ask her why she is a seaman. She responds in a longer manner than I would like so I ignore her again using my Lyman's ear to filter for words of interest.

 

While she continues speaking I begin inspecting her body. My mind's eye places her into a resting anatomical position. My mind begins running through the numerous places where I could kill her with a touch or send such pain through her body she would rejoice at death. I return to my surroundings and she continues to talk about her childhood. Very good, I say interrupting her. She asks me if she should get me a drink. I ask her if she would like one and gently push her into the bath. She emerges spluttering but I am already leaving the room. Her sense of humor is lacking I conclude. While the loss of music is insignificant for me I am thankful that my humor is intact.