Having finally signed up with the lightning knights, Luvi was supposed to investigate the different branches to find out which one she wanted to join. She already knew that she wanted to be a guardian so she had been told to meet up with a guardian who would show her the ropes. She had an inkling that she would want to get to know some of the other branches regardless, but she was so busy with her initiate training that she wasn’t sure exactly how to find the time.
It seemed like every time she thought she had a free ten minutes she was getting barked at by some higher up. She was fortunate that she had her own housing and didn’t have to stay where the less fortunate initiates had to stay. That alone would be enough to drive her over the edge. She definitely needed that break once in a while to show that she was still her own person and not solely a part of the militaristic society. After all that training, at least she could say that she was a more disciplined person because of it. And now she knew a couple laws that she didn’t before which was nice.
Luvi arrived crisp and early in the morning, just like she had been told. She had assumed that she would be meeting one on one with a guardian, but that didn’t seem to be the case. There was a medium sized group of people in the same kind of uniform. She recognized a couple of them from her own initiate trainings and she tried to figure out who the rest of these people were. They weren’t all initiates, that was for sure.
“Hey, what’s going on,” she inquired to someone she had sparred with earlier, “did someone tell you to come here?” “Yeah,” the initiate responded, “I heard they liked to group us all up so that they don’t have to take us out one on one. It saves resources, or something like that.”
Luvi nodded her thanks then waited for the man in charge to show up. All she had was a name and she wasn’t about to go asking around for him if this was a group activity. “Okay, listen up! My name is Penelope and I’m here to guide you through your first day as prospective guardians.” Luvi’s ears perked up. Penelope was the one she was supposed to meet up with.
“First thing’s first,” Penelope continued, “form up!” The initiates scrambled to get into some kind of organized marching formation then stood at attention. They took several minutes to get situated but they got it done all the same.
“Now, the job of the Guardians is to defend the city. This mainly consists of protecting our citizens from threats inside our borders. You’ll be fighting criminals, spies, wild beasts that make it inside, and pretty much anything else you’re ordered to do. As a Guardian, your job is to look for trouble and potential trouble so that you can stop things from getting out of hand. The main way we do this is through patrols, which is what we’re going to be doing today. Now maaaarrrchhh!”
So, the group marched through town on their patrol. The nicest thing about this whole deal was that they weren’t being yelled at for messing up their formation, at least not as much as when Luvi had started off in general initiate training. They went on for about thirty minutes like this as they took turns singing cadences to keep everyone in rhythm. It never got to Luvi’s turn which was fortunate because she didn’t know any off the top of her head.
They eventually stopped at an area that was surrounded by bars, bars, and more bars. Luvi was perplexed as to why there wasn’t a single other establishment in sight then she remembered that she was in Rharne, the city of drunks. She was ordered to spread out, along with all the other initiates. They took posts and were instructed to just stand there and watch.
Penelope eventually spoke up, “This area gets really rowdy this early. All the drunks that have been drinking till the morning come out and it’s your job to make sure they don’t cause problems.” Penelope went on about how to handle drunks, and even told a few humorous stories of what kind of stuff happened ‘back in the day.’ It was all a good time so far and Luvi thought that this might not be so bad if she was able to find a patrol buddy that was easy to kill time with. She did get awfully lonely when fighting by herself, but at least then she could take all the credit. She’d have to try out working with and without a partner to see which one worked best for her.
She wasn’t sure if bars ever closed in Rharne, but it looked like these early hours of the morning were when even the seasoned alcholics emerged from the bars and decided to go home. Luvi wondered why they didn’t just live at the bar if all they did was drink all day and night. It was actually kind of pathetic in her opinion to have been so overcome by an addiction that your life was reduced to this. Even still, she couldn’t hate alcohol itself, it was some good stuff and proved for a good time once in a while.
The drunk stumbled along, then like clockwork Luvi spotted a drunk just fall over someone who was just minding their own business. The victim was pretty understanding of the situation and was happy to move along, but the drunk took offense and thought that he had just been run into. Penelope nodded to Luvi who was the closest and she sprung into action. She heard other commotions going on around her and she assumed her other initiates were having their own troubles to deal with. Luvi did her best to put herself between the drunk and the law abiding citizen and to calm the situation down. Then she got punched in the face. Ouch.
Luvi raised her fists and got into a straight up fight with the drunk who seemed to be used to this whole song and dance. Speaking of dancing, he was pretty good at dancing circles around Luvi and was getting in three punches for every one that she managed to land. Luvi didn’t know how she could compete against someone who was able to so effectively weave in punches and fight like a wild drunk. “Comeon,” the drunk shouted, “don’t tell me this is your first day, give me a challenge!”
Luvi narrowed her eyes and landed a solid punch on his jaw that sent him stumbling backwards. “Use the baton!” her leader shouted at her. Luvi had completely forgotten about the baton that was strapped to her hip. She hadn’t even used it since she had been given it because she was a swordsman. She pulled it out and fiddled with it until it extended then started whacking at the drunk until he yielded. He yielded in the strangest way though. After some time he simply caught the baton and said he was tired and wanted to go home.
Luvi had to recalibrate herself and realize that this was just another citizen and he was probably just fighting her because he knew what she was trying to be. She looked around and saw that many others were also wrapping up their encounters. Luvi ended up helping the man down the street until he said he could make it the rest of the way on his own. “good luck to ye,” he called back with a toothy smile. Luvi smiled back then returned to Penelope who was giving out more orders.
They had successfully made it through their first stopping point for the day. Penelope instructed a handful of initiates to stay there for a couple more hours then she took the rest of them around and placed them at their own spots. Their only job now was to look for any criminal activity and call for help if they spotted anything. Luvi didn’t spot anything of notice, maybe because she wasn’t that good at detection. She ended up having a boring rest of the day, but she was still able to relive that short fight that she had had in her mind.
After the morning passed without many more issues, the group headed back to the keep after collecting initiates from each stop along the patrol route. At the end Penelope congratulated them on their first day and encouraged them to apply to become guardians if they thought they were up to taking on the initiation. Penelope didn’t go into details about what the initiation was and Luvi wasn’t able to gleam any information from the others. She was just going to have to assume that she was going to have to find out the hard way, by just applying and seeing what happened.
