Airborne school was broken up into three weeks. The first week was called ground week. Ground week was eight hours of learning how to fall and land correctly. The first day started with a physical readiness test in the morning followed by an hour for lunch then the rest of the afternoon learning how to land correctly. Emily was surprised at the large number of people did not have the Super School rocker on their uniforms and the ages of the people going through the class. While a large number of people were Emily’s age there were a lot of older people trying to get their silver wings.

The rest of the week consisted of falling correctly while still on the ground. The instructors were constantly correcting their positioning. They insisted that Emily learn the positioning correctly even though she would most likely survive with little to no injuries if she fell from a plane. The school was eight hours long and after class ended most of the people decided to go to the bar. Emily went out the first night but it was not the same without Wigabaut and the gang. She stayed in for the rest of the school and kept on learning Arabic.

The second week was called Tower week. In tower week they learned how to exit the plane and learn how to steer the parachute. They started on a 34-foot tall tower and ended with the 250-foot tower where they jumped off the platform as if jumping from a plane and then landing correctly. They learned what to do if a parachute failed or got fouled up. It was nerve-racking. It wasn’t so much the height that scared Emily it was all the things she had to remember before, during, and after the jump.

The last week was called jump week and it was where they did their actual jumps from a plane. People got weirdly overly excited that Sunday the day before the week started. There was a cookout at the BEQ, Bachelor enlisted quarters. An Air Force tech Sergeant she was rooming with remarked that there was enough testosterone in the air to start several wars.

They had to make five jumps with one being a night jump. Jump week was a battle of nerves. The entire class was formed up at the airfield to wait to be loaded on the plane. Most of the time Emily found herself loaded up and waiting. They had to wait on weather but Emily lucked out and jumped at least once a day with the last jump being a night jump on Thursday. At nine in the morning that Friday Emily lined up with her class and got her silver jump wings.

That weekend she completed her language program in Arabic and turned her computer in to command to be sent back to Fort Rida. She was now certified an expert in both Farsi and Arabic. She was also given orders to report to Camp Rogers for Army Ranger School at Fort Benning. It wasn’t all that far from where she was so she grabbed her bags got directions to her new barrack and ran the entire way. It was on the same base but just a different part of the base.

The first part of ranger school was much like Super School in that there was a lot of running around and exercises. It was also different in that at super school they didn’t really teach all that much about small unit tactics as they did in Ranger School. There was a lot of teaching moments in Ranger School, unlike Super School where you screwed up they shot you with the dart guns. In Ranger School, they explained why it was that way and how to do it better.

While most of the people had graduated from Super School Program there were still some people who had not. There were some people who were going into leadership programs that required Ranger training. There were a lot of people in the late twenties and early thirties in the program. That was another thing that was different than super school.

There was a lot of leadership training involved. For example, Emily was put in charge several times. The first time that happened the instructor yelled that her Chalk leader had just been injured. She was senior so it was her Chalk now. For the next two days, she fumbled with being a leader of the five-person team. She was told she did all right but she had room for improvement. She took that as she screwed up pretty badly.

Emily was the only super in the class and the instructors were constantly asking her what she could do with her greater strength and invulnerability. They kept asking her to think outside the box and use her abilities to advance her team's success. There were a lot more ways that she could use her power to help her squadmates than she ever thought possible. From the obvious being the person out on point to take direct fire to the not so obvious ones where she would kneel down while the heavy gunner used her as a shield. The rifles she was trained on were designed to kill supers. Most of her rifles were slow but heavy hitting so sometimes it was faster to kill the enemy with faster weapons with lower penetrating power than to use hers, so using herself as a meat shield was the better option in some situations.

She was often the distraction they used while attacking or running from the enemy fire. She was often sent ahead to charge right at the enemy while the rest of the platoon rotated and flanked the enemy. Once they had everyone in her platoon climb on up on a rope on the side of a cliff and the had her pull the entire platoon up. They often loaded her down with extra supplies and used her as a pack mule. That’s when she really began to appreciate her power of endurance. Unlike most of her platoon who walked around like zombies she almost always felt awake and alert. Even when they kept her up for a week straight to see how strong her endurance was. She felt tired at the end of the week but not like a zombie.

She also learned a very important lesson about mass versus weight. Most of the awesome weapons designed to kill supers with extremely high immunity are mounted on a vehicle because of the mass of the vehicle, not the weight. Firing weapons that could kill a super with very high immunity requires enough mass to withstand the recoil. She had more mass than the average person but not really enough to fire something like a machine gun with enough punch to kill a super with class A immunity. She could easily lift such a weapon but even with super strength, she did not have enough mass to stop the recoil. It was basic physics. There are some portable weapons systems she was trained on that was designed to kill supers but the ammo was either cost prohibited or it was too bulky to be practical without a supply vehicle following her around.

The First phase lasted for twenty-two days. The second stage was the mountain phase. Here they learned how it was to survive in an enemy environment with little to no provisions. They worked nearly around the clock with very little food. They learned how important it was to conserve ammunition and when to attack and when to let the enemy go on their way. The second phase was brutal and by end of the phase even Emily was starting to get worn out.

The last phase was in Florida. When Emily thought of Florida she thought of the sunny beaches and ocean. She did not expect that quite a bit of Florida was swamp land with a lot of little streams and rivers. Here her weight was a problem. While she could and did swim she was so dense now it was a struggle. When she was on a small boat she had to position herself very carefully so not to capsize the boat.

It was a long month and Emily was more than glad it was over. She stood in the quad happily when she finally got her Ranger Tab and her Tan Beret. She was a bit sad that she was one of the few people who didn’t have any family members there at her graduation but she made enough friends to hang out with after the ceremony was over. The day after graduation Emily received orders for Fort Benning and to report to 75th Ranger Regiment 3rd Battalion.