No April joke here for you buddy, sry for that.

Hope you enjoy.

As always: please comment, point out grammar mistakes, rate....blabla

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We work with utmost care, resolve and speed at the problem and we never made so much progress as in this last decade.

The progression from cloning single cells to complete organs without complications is a huge success and shows we are on the right way.

The biggest contribution we can attribute to the founding of the UMA and the following cooperation.

Only the exchange of information, collaboration in our projects and the combining of our resources made the current level of development possible.

As a representative of the Peoples Republic of China I declare hereby the pride our people take in participating in the research as test-subjects.

(….)

This statistic shows most of the problems with cloned organs are now no longer existent.

The deathrate from implanted cloned organs has declined from around 94%, two years ago, to around 6%, two months ago. We are still working to reduce this number further.

(….)

Our biggest success right now is the cloning of a human brain. Yes, my dear colleagues you have heard correctly. We have succeeded in cloning a human brain!

We are currently in a test phase with newborns to see if they work correctly.

We expect the first short term results to be visible in 6 months from now.

On request of the American Head of Research, Dr. Underwood, we are currently in a joint research project to find a way to copy a whole person from one brain to another.

(…)

As suggested from the UK Head of Research, Dr. Stein, we are currently trying to clone demon parts. With time we might be able to clone a whole demon too, but that is still years away.

The moment this happens we have an endless supply of test-subjects!

So right now this project enjoys our second highest priority.

(….)

As you dear ladies and gentlemen already realized, we are still not able to clone a complete human being yet.

Every product so far turned out defective.

And believe me, we test continuously to assure the fastest progression possible.

So even with all this progress the possibility of cloning humans and thus mass produce GMWs is still not feasible yet, but it is only a matter of a few more years.

One of the most interesting discovery this year was the breakthrough in the research for longevity.

As this will be a topic of utmost interest it will be the first topic on this agenda.

So what does it matter for us scientists, now that we decoded the secrets to eternal live?

Now I grant the Indian Head of Research, Dr. Amrit, the word.”

-PR China Head of Research, Dr. Xi Hei Long, at the opening speech at the annual Biology and Genetics Conference(BGC) in Johannesburg, 2054.06.20

---Time: 2054.08.12, 11:43---

---Location: Europe, Scotland, close to Lochgoilhead---

---Size of Group: 41---

---Ragnar Rok, currently teacher---

I look over the remains of the little village, once known as Lochgoilhead.

Sometimes I seriously wonder how places get their names.

6 years ago there still were some people left in this place, but a demon attack eradicated all of them.

The month after the attack they would have been relocated to another city, but it seems the demons had other plans.

My 200kg backpack, filled to the brim with bullets, is on the ground and I sit on top of it.

I munch away on my lunch, not minding the first quiet popping sound, but stop immediately after the second one for a moment. I look at the sandwich in my hands.

I know I just put one pain pill in here.

I inspect my sandwich with care and I find 2 more pain pills.

I put my sandwich carefully down and search through my other 50kg of luggage, to make sure nobody messed with them.

First Aid kit, fine, water, fine, other food, fine, gadgets, fine, more pain pills, fine.

After 5 more minutes I went through everything and find nothing altered or missing.

I look over my class, sitting 2m further down the small hill we use for the break right now.

I ordered the break, slumped down my back pack and was about to eat, when I was interrupted by one of my students.

After that I made a short walk through the small camp and asked if they are fine and so on.

They don’t really trust me anymore after the incident last month when I killed the Controller.

I learned a week later that I crashed through the wall right in the middle of one of their classes.

The sight of the fight wasn’t something nice and they were shocked.

The day afterwards didn't help either. That day at that time I normally have P.E with them.

So most of the classes just had a free period that and the next day, and so they were close by in a small park.

Talking in small groups and who knows what.

Some saw me go over to the training grounds and some saw Blue Flower and followed.

The moment we got ready to fight the news spread around and most students who had a free period assembled.

So close to every first year saw me go berserk.

I guess that just confirmed the rumours around Broken and pushed them away from me.

Back to reality.

I guess it’s time for punishment.

“Line up!”-I

By now they know the drill and immediately leave everything as is, forming a small rectangle.

It takes them less than 10 seconds to assemble properly.

In my right hand is the small tube with pain pills, I walk over to them.

“Some of you apparently think it is funny to skip on their pain pills and put it in my food. Instead of 1 there were 4 pain pills in there. So 3 of you skipped on it.”-I

I pause for a second before I continue.

“If the perpetrators step up now the punishment will be more lenient.”-I

I pause for 30 seconds, giving them a chance. I doubt they will take it, they are far too afraid.

“Well, if that is the case then I have no other choice as to extend the punishment to the whole class.

If of course somebody knows who is responsible and reports it now the punishment for the rest of the class won’t be as bad. Now is your chance.”-I

This time I don’t even need to pause.

5 of my students step out of line. I point at the first boy.

“Yes, James?”-I

“It was Edward, Thomas and Josephine.”-James

I look at the other 4.

“Do you have to add anybody else? Or is he telling a lie?”-I

All of them shake their head.

I point to left side.

“Assemble over there. Edward, Thomas and Josephine assemble to my right.”-I

I start to take out 12 pain pills.

“Since you skipped your training, thought it was funny to give your teacher 4 of these things and give your whole class a bunch of trouble each of you will eat 4 of these. Now!”-I

I press the pills in their hands and wait for them to eat them.

The look of fear is kind of funny. I wonder what they thought would happen the moment they put their pills in my sandwich, probably that I would lose conscious or something like that.

They really are still kids, otherwise they would have thought of the consequences thoroughly.

So far they only have always eaten 1 pill and that was enough for some to collapse. The first few times at least, now they can somehow handle it.

The 3 of them swallow the pills and for a few moments nothing happens.

Then they start to collapse, their mouth foaming and their body having a spasm.

Edward starts to soil himself.

I ignore it for now.

I look over to the 5 who betrayed their classmates. At the moment I’m thankful for them, but something like betraying your squad could turn troublesome for them later.

I take out 10 pain pills.

“Each of you betrayed your 3 classmates here. From your point of view it might just be to spare the rest of the class the punishment, but remember the following: Never betray your squad mates.

You fight, live and die with them. They need to be able to trust you, no matter what and these 3 over there aren’t able to rely on you for this.

So each of you will eat 2 pain pills.”-I

They are surprised and a bit angry, but that starts to turn into fear the moment I hand out the pills.

I watch them and, just as before, a few moments later they start to collapse, everybody but James that is.

He is still conscious, but curled up into a ball.

That is really remarkable, I should watch him closer in training.

Next is the rest of the class.

I take out 32 pills.

“All of you will still take another pill as punishment. You let all of this happen, you didn’t stop any of your classmates right now or before that. Either because you didn’t know what was going on or you thought it was funny. As classmates and possible future squad mates you should get to know each other better and anticipate what they are about to do.”-I

I hand each them of their additional pill and make sure all of them eat it.

Some start to shake, some start to convulse, but nobody collapses.

I’m kind of proud of them. They should only be able to stand that at the end of this month.

Putting them through hell and all seems to be worth it.

I calculate quickly how many pills are left.

246, that would even knock me out.

I put roughly half of them in my hand and their faces show fear, thinking I will make them eat even more.

“Just so you know, even if you guys put all your pills into my sandwich, I would still be standing.”-I

Then I put all of them in my mouth and start crunching on them.

Their look of surprise and shock is really funny.

A few seconds later the effect start to kick in.

A burning pain rushes through me every time one of my organs only even vibrates.

Every breath I take, even every heart beat is like an explosion of pain. Every moment I’m bombarded with pain right now. I take these pills on a regular basis, and half a year ago my maximum was about 50 of these tiny things, but since I have unlimited access to them my use just simply exploded.

My face and my arms twitch a bit, but I grin at them the whole time.

Some have their mouths wide open, others seem to be frozen, but they all stare at me.

“You can return to your lunch.”-I

I walk back to my backpack and continue to eat.

A few moments later I regret having taken them.

Not because of the pain, but the red mist that starts to creep in at the corner of my vision.

Fuck.

Since my body associates pain with a fight I automatically get into a fighting mood.

Not very helpful if you have to watch a group of 40 young teenagers.

I take out my map and look on it.

At midnight we are supposed to be back at the academy.

Even though this is a field trip to show them the results of a demon invasion, we have to make haste.

It’s not like we can stroll around for a walk.

It is just a fast paced march through some part of Scotland and then to some village, which was just recently destroyed.

I hope none of my students came from that village.

I'm not good at cheering up someone, especially if they lost a precious person.

I nibble on my sandwich and continue to look over the route we take.

Before the punishment we could march a bit more relaxed, now they need to rest at least another 25 minutes before the worst effects of the pain pills are over, so we need to step up our speed afterwards quite a bit.

This is going to be annoying for me and something like a death march for them.

“Sir Rok, may I ask a question?”-?

I look up and see Mikaila Everdeen right in front of me.

She seems to be the only first-year which isn't afraid of me.

“Sure, but please sit down.”-I

I point towards the ground opposite of me.

“Thank you.”-Mikaila

The girl sits down and I wait for her question.

Mikaila nervously fiddles with her hands and looks down towards the ground.

I wait for a few moments for her questions, but without avail and so I ask her.

“So, what's your question?”-I

“Hm? Oh, that.....

Ehm, there are rumours about you Sir.

And some of them are relating to these pain pills.

Some say you are only eating these pills, because you love pain...because you are insane.”-Mikaila

She interrupts herself and looks at me, obviously looking for a reaction.

I clench my jaws and bite the inside of my mouth until I draw blood, apart from that no muscle of my body moves.

“So, I was worrying you made us eat those pills just because you like seeing other people in pain.”-Mikaila

My jaws clench even tighter and my right hand forms a fist of its own accord.

“But after you just explained why we each had to take a extra pain pill as punishment I think I understand why we need to take them.

On a battlefield we will experience pain and so we need to be prepared to tolerate and even accept it. If we fear pain we will not be able to fight at our full potential.

Is that right, Sir Ragnar?”-Mikaila

My jaws and fist relax and I grin a bit at her.

“You are really intelligent Mikaila.

I so far never told your class the reason for this, so you could figure it out yourself.

Quite remarkable. No wonder your classmates voted for you as class president.”-I

The girl smiled happily about the praise she just received.

“Thank you Sir Rok.

I will work hard on embracing the pain.”-Mikaila

My face flinches for a second.

“Mikaila, never embrace pain, ok?

Pain is a sign from your body that something is not right.

We only make you more pain tolerant, so that you will not lose consciousness during the fight or get distracted for too long. Every moment your mind is mostly focused on the pain is a moment you can lose your live.

These pain pills and the pain gloves only exist to train your mind for that purpose, to harden your resolve against pain and to minimize the time your mind is focused on it.

The moment you embrace pain something in your head is wrong.

That is the simple version.”-I

She looks at me surprised for a second and then looks down to the ground, obviously thinking about what she just heard

Yes, I know I'm declaring myself insane by this, but am I not?.

I continue with my explanation.

“You are maybe wondering why it is bad to embrace it.

Apart from the reason that your body will suffer severely under this in battle there is another reason.”-I

Mikaila looks up at me, clearly surprised.

“Your squad will suffer under it. The tactics and formations will fail, because the person who embraces the pain might or will take heavy injuries and thus incapacitate himself and endanger the mission. The person might even leave the formation to “safe” a squadmate from a deathblow or something similar.

No matter how noble that sounds, this leaves a opening in the formation and will lead to the death of the whole squad.

Do you understand that?

Hope you never have somebody in your squad who embraces pain!”-I

The girl in front of me stays silent, obviously thinking about what she just heard.

Then she just gets up and looks me into the eye.

“Thank you for this valuable lesson.

….

And thank you for saving my sister and me from the Demons back this January.”-Mikaila

The schoolgirl bows her head and leaves.

Saved her sister and her?

January?

Is it already over 6 months since I had a mission?

But when and where?

I think I had around 5 or 6 missions this January.

Maybe I should ask her some other time about the details.

But this explains why she isn't afraid of me.

If I really saved her and her sister, she probably thinks of me as something like a hero.

Pffffffft, me a hero!

“Hahahahahaha......”-I

I can't hold the laughter in, even thought it is only very low.

-6 hours later-

I wade through the blood, entrails and other body parts and fluids, that spattered over this small city, mostly human origin.

It feels and sounds like I'm walking through mud and not the remains of what once belonged to human beings. As I put my foot down for my next step I hear an eyeball pop under it.

There really is no way to not walk on the remains of human, so I don't even bother trying to avoid them or being careful.

This small city was attacked two days ago.

Two days ago 5.000 humans still walked these streets, chatting, laughing and enjoying themselves.

Then these damn demons appeared out of nowhere and slaughtered this town.

A few hundred survived, but most had no chance and couldn't even reach the bunker in time.

Through these streets must literally have flown rivers of blood.

I can still see where the manholes were overwhelmed and couldn't take this amount of blood.

A look back at my class shows that most can't handle the stress from something like this.

Who would at that age?

A few months ago they were still ordinary kids, playing around after school, having no real clue about the problems of this world.

Now they are confronted with the horrors and cruelty of this reality.

I guess ignorance can really be bliss.

Retching and the sound of people throwing up can be heard.

I ignore it, they need to figure out a way for themselves to handle such a situation.

This is the first time for them seeing something like this, but it will definitely not be the last.

Our destination is the town centre, the place with the most corpses.

The cleaning team will take care of this place tomorrow.

The point of cleaning the town of most of the remains is to prevent a breeding grounds for diseases and plagues.

Otherwise nobody would care about the remains of the death or even the town itself.

As I approach the town centre, I take a look around.

You can still see the defence parameter, made of sandbags, surrounding the bunker in a circle.

Weapons, arms, legs and heads, from police officers as well as civilians, are all strewn around the place. Entire corpses are piled up on each other, creating new barriers.

This wasn't a battle, this was a slaughter.

The flag of the UK and the UMA weakly flaps at the flagpole, overlooking the sad and horrible sight.

I wait for my class to reach me.

The first few are directly behind me, green in their faces, ready to throw up any moment.

It takes the entire class a good hour to reach the centre.

Most of them had thrown up not only once, but at least twice or thrice.

The sight, smell, sound and feeling of this place was too much to stand for a normal human.

Luckily nobody had lost consciousness, that would be annoying.

Most of them are visibly shocked and many are shaking.

They are tired, exhausted, have sore muscle from the long march, feel sick and probably are hungry.

I'm sure that most are reaching their physical and mental limits, maybe just a few more hours and they will drop and fall asleep.

But that is the whole point of this exercise, to show them their physical and mental limits, as well as to stir their hate against the demons.

Hate is a important factor in the propaganda of the UMA, without the demons as a external enemy to hate, the whole UMA would collapse.

The minds of the people need to be kept busy, they need not to think.

At least not about the political situation.

They are reminded every day to hate the demons.

Every day there are horrible reports about the villages, towns and cities attacked by demons and the reports are not objective, but very emotional.

They are not reporting about the lost production, resources and strategic importance of the place, but are rather interviewing a survivors who lost their children, wife or husband, parents, friends or other precious persons to them.

I look at my class again.

“Two days ago this place was bustling with human laughter and activity.

This town was home to over 5.000 people, now most of them are dead.

Killed, no slaughtered, by the damned foes we call demons.

They had no chance and no mercy was given.

Remember you, who were chosen to be completes, must always fight them.

No weakness is allowed, no insecurity, no hesitation or reluctance.

Your will must be a burning flame, always ready to purge the demon spawn anywhere and anytime.

You are the only defence humanity has against these foes.

Burn this sight into your memory and call it forth the moment you are about to give up.

The moment you surrender or give up you are dead, but what is worse, the people you swore to protect are dead too.

Pain is a illusion of the body, desperation is a illusion of the mind.”-I

Silence.

Some look determined, some contemplative, some awed.

Looks of surprise and hate are intermingled in between.

They certainly didn't expect a speech from me, but probably some gruesome from them.

“We march back to the academy.”-I

It takes my class and me another 30 minutes to get out and back on the road to Hamilton.

-Midnight Hamilton Academy-

The gigantic metal doors slowly close behind us and I look at my class.

Most are sitting down on a patch of grass and are napping.

Normally I would call them back to order the moment they slack off, but they had a exhausting day and are just about to drop everything and fall asleep.

I just go through the name list and tick of everyone of my pupils after another.

I had the tablet back to the porter and start to control their bagpacks to make sure they didn't lose or threw away anything.

After 30 minutes I'm finished controlling the bags and we walk to a storage hall to put the bagpacks away.

It takes roughly 15 minutes to reach the place and another 15 minutes to stow the equipment away correctly.

Finally finished with the annoying, but necessary tasks, I'm just about to escort them back to their dormitories when I hear it.

My head shoots up and looks around for the source of the sound, trying to make sure it isn't a just my imagination.

Then the sound starts again.

Sirens.

The sound of a demon invasion.

The moment the siren starts a second time, floodlights all over the campus and on the wall turn on, one after another.

Suddenly defence turrets are wheeled out of the ground where moments before just patches of grass were.

Then an announcement started repeating itself.

“Demon Invasion danger rate B. All soldiers to your position immediately. All Completes assemble in front of the west gate. All high school students assemble in front of the bunker. All middle school students and non combatant personnel retreat inside the bunker. This is not a drill, I repeat this is not a drill!”