Osborne bit down on her lip to contain her excitement. She had done enough. She had made it. She was accepted into one of the training academies.

Osborne makes her way through the crowd towards the stage, as the other nineteen initiates were doing alongside her. She steps onto the stage, along with the rest of her new companions, all smiling and happy about being being chosen. But Osborne knew that these smiling faces wouldn't last long, as only the first leg of her race to the military was finished. She would be soon contesting for one of only ten spots available for each academy to become a part of the real military.

The twenty initiates were led down the steps on the other side of the stage, ushered by two military soldiers towards the four armoured vehicles waiting for us next to the stage, along the side of the street. Osborne stepped into the second car in line along with four others behind her, as the soldiers opened the doors for the initiates to enter.

As Osborne's head leaned into the car, she saw a half dozen seats lined up in rows along the side of the car, the seats facing the middle of the the vehicle. She sat down in one of the furthest seats, her head reclining against the back of the chair as she strapped herself in. The rest of the newly selected trainees followed suite, sitting down in seats all around Osborne, and she began to get a look at some of her new competitors.

Most of the initiates in the car with Osborne were male, all taller than her five-foot-seven-inch frame, some towering over her like giants. But there was also one other girl alongside them, sitting across the car from Osborne, about the same height as her, and similar in appearance, but what stood out to Osborne was the girls bright blue eyes, which looked as though the ocean was inside of them.

The driver started up the engine of the car they were in, and just like that, they were on their way to the academy.

|| 20|11|2172 12:23:09||

Osborne stares out the window of the car. They were nearing the border now, as one of the soldiers sitting near her told them. Looking out towards the grassy fields on the outskirts of the city, Osborne spots the wall surrounding the city to the car's left. Craning her neck closer to the bulletproof glass of the window, she spots the forest alongside the concrete of the wall, where they seemed to be headed. As they continues along the road, the vehicle bumping up and down increasingly, as the the firm cement gave way to rocks and dirt, and loose gravel used in an attempt to cover up potholes.

Eventually, the grassy fields became closely clustered trees, branches nearly scraping against the side of the car. Osborne could see orange pine needles covering the ground, everywhere, so that you couldn't see the grass or dirt below.
As the forest grew thicker, so filled with brush and greenery that Osborne couldn't make out which branches belonged to which tree, the path grew once again thinner, so that the wheels of the car were just on the edge of the dirt pathway, so that if another car where to come form the other direction, they would have no hope of passing safely around us.

By now, Osborne notices that everyone was peering out their windows, hoping to catch a glimpse of where they were headed, the training academy they would be spending the next two weeks of their lives at, preparing for a chance to serve their city in the war.

"Look! I see it over there," points an enthusiastic boy sitting next to Osborne, scanning the trees, and finding a manmade structure. Sure enough, within less than a minute, the armoured vehicle came to a screeching halt outside the the front doors of the gates surrounding an enormous red-bricked building, flat to the ground, rarely rising more than three floors off the ground at its highest point, but spanning on for what seemed like miles, as far as I could see from my vantage point.

The driver leaned out of the window, to speak to the intercom on the side of the gate, on a slab of stone. Whoever was on the receiving end of the message seemed to have heard it immediately, and the gates opened. They kept moving, slowly into the boundaries of the academy, until the path came to an end and the driver stopped once more, just in front of the front doors of the building. The soldiers opened the doors of the car, and one by one the initiates unbuckled their belts that were harnessing them to their seats, and stepped out of the armoured vehicle, now under the canopy of the leaves and pine needles above them.

Once everyone from all three of the cars had exited, the six soldiers and most likely members or trainers of the academy opened the doors of the building and let everyone step in. What Osborne saw in her first glance of the facility was exactly what she expected, perfectly reflecting everything she had come to know about the military. The walls were a monotonous shade of grey, neither plaques nor pictures and paintings adorning the walls, all along the long hallway they had entered, bare. Osborne saw a few soldiers walking around down the hall, all of them marching robotically in twos, their heads facing the front, none of them looking around at their surroundings, or at the new trainees. Just like the soldiers who had brought them here, they held their heads high, stoic, confident expressions on their faces.

The doors slammed shut behind Osborne, and her and the other initiates were led down the hallway by the soldiers. The sixteen-year-olds tried to keep up with their older counterparts, who were hurrying down the hallway now in quick long strides. Suddenly they took a sharp left turn down another one of the hallways branching off from the main entrance corridor. The group of trainees kept going, until finally the soldiers in front of them came to a halt. On either side of them, there was a door.

"Any female trainees will be following us now, as we will be showing you your sleeping chambers," one of the two female soldiers said, gesturing towards the door on the right, as the other soldier fiddled with a ring of keys, and unlocked the door.

It swung open and the female initiates followed the soldiers into their sleeping chambers. Osborne counted all of them and came up with seven female trainees including her, concluding that there must be thirteen male trainees.

Continuing into the room, the nine of them stopped, and the two soldiers at the front turned to face them. "This is where you will be staying for the next two weeks of your training. The seven of you will only be sleeping here, as a lot of our training is done in the forest around us. You will have your choice of bunk, and your trainee fatigues will be given out to you later this evening. Bathrooms are down that hallway there," she points to a short hall on the right side of the room, leading to a door I can just make out the silhouette of in the darkness.

"If you could follow us please," the other soldier said, motioning for us to come with her, back out the door we came in through.

We joined up with the male trainees once more and all six of the soldiers led us on the next part of our tour; the mess hall. We continued down same hallway as the one with our rooms until we reached the very end, passing many unmarked doors on our way.

The group reached a tall, wide metal door, and even before it was opened Osborne could hear the noise from behind it. As the doors opened, they were greeted with a bustling beehive of activity. We stepped in and the soldiers leading our tour proceeded to talk about how they would be coming here three times a day for their meals, and listen to the days' announcements, and what times the meals would be at, but Osborne had tuned out completely. She was completely transfixed, as were many of the other trainees around her.

Osborne could see kitchen staff bustling around the spacious hall, carrying pots and pans through a pair of swinging doors, most likely leading into the kitchen, or carrying trays filled with dirty cups, utensils and dishes, piled high and blocking the kitchen staff's view. There were former trainees who had since graduated to the military and were possibly returning to see how the training was going of the new initiates, or to see how their trainers were doing. Or even to seek a job once their time in the military was up and they were ready to move on, though the military was reluctant to let anyone go nowadays, as they needed as much help in the field as they could get. The mess hall seemed nothing at all like the stern hallways they had walked through earlier.

Finished explaining how the mess hall worked to the initiates, the soldiers led them out another identical door on the opposite side of the room. They kept going, down another hallway, until they reached the end of that one, now seemingly close to the back of the long facility. Another set of doors similar to the mess hall doors were once again opened for the trainees and they stepped into a vast auditorium, dimly lit, with rows and rows of seats, facing the stage. The stage was sleek, and modern, and unlike the other part of the theatre, was brightly lit, giving the feeling of the stage being the centre, with the darkness surrounding it.

At this time, the auditorium was quite empty, and the trainees and soldiers sat down near the front, behind a few partially filled rows, soldiers spaced out along them. As Osborne and her companions waited, the auditorium began to fill, as squadrons of stern soldiers made their way to their seats, sitting down and staring forward, wordlessly.

Eventually, as the theatre filled up with more members of the academy, and the unusual silence for the amount of people became unbearable, a man stepped up onto the stage, the one that had represented the academy at the selection earlier today, and was soon followed by a group of other soldiers and academy Council members, who sat down in the seats at the back of the stage, while the representative and most likely the head of the Council stepped up to the microphone near the front of the stage.

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen," his voice boomed over the speakers, in a commanding manner, "We are gathered here today, as you all very well know, to welcome the new initiates to our program." This was met with a round of applause.

"We are all proud of our efforts this morning, young trainees, which is why our Council decided to choose you to be our responsibilities for the next two weeks, and to prepare you for the military. And this year, as usual, we have brought two soldiers in from the army, specially to train you and make sure you are ready and confident for anything that may lie ahead for you. I would like to give a warm welcome to this year's trainers, Lieutenants Reginald and Oswald!"

Two of the men dressed in their military uniforms stood up from their seats at the back of the stage, and waked over to the microphone, waving quickly to the audience and smiling momentarily. They stood on either side of the academy's representative, with their arms crossed identically behind them.

"I am sure that these two men will have no problem preparing the initiates for their future careers in the military, but as many of you know, to ensure that only the best enter the army, to end this war once and for all, only the ten strongest and most courageous and determined of you will be selected at the end of the next two weeks, based on your performances in the final task, that will decide your fates. I wish the best of luck to all of you and hope to see you once again at our academy, this time dressed in your very own military uniforms!" The man finished, and after more applause, the auditorium began to empty.

Still following their guides, the initiates walked out of the auditorium, right back to the mess hall. Osborne hadn't even realized how hungry she was until she sat down at a table with the rest of her fellow trainees, and smelled the aroma of the food drifting out from the kitchen. As one of the soldiers came back with a tray piled with plates of food, she ate quicker and more than she ever had in her life.

After dinner, since they had eaten a much later dinner than they normally would have here, and they were nearing twenty-one hours, Osborne went back to the sleeping chambers, along with another couple of the girls, and climbed straight into her bed.

Though she was incredibly exhausted from the day that she had been having, and her exhilarating first day at the academy, Osborne couldn't get to sleep. Perhaps it was nerves for the day to come. She lay awake for hours that night, lying on her back and staring up at the ceiling, listening to the sounds of the crickets and the whos of the owls from the forest echoing into ,their single window at night, wondering what the next day would bring.