Midterms

Tests start today… thought Kuroi as he sat up in his bed. Midterms. Great not only had he been “volunteered” to go another year into school but they shoved them with regular shinigami duties as well. He would have to take off a day just to do these stupid tests. He sat up and got ready for his morning. As every year there will be a different test than ever before. Even though he knew that there would be much physicality to this one. He saw the treadmills being wheeled around that the lieutenant exams used. He hoped that they were modified to tone down the speed even though he knew that they wouldn’t have been. As he arrived his entire year wasn’t here yet but they would be soon he got inline and waited about 20 minutes and they started letting people into the testing facilities 13 at a time. This is going to take awhile for the lollygaggers who showed up late. He reckoned that he would be in the third group let in. after about 10 minutes they let another 13 in. and another ten and he was sure enough led into a room with those treadmills in them. After he weighed his possibilities and his options he came up with one. Follow the directions.

The attendant probably from squad 12 said “start running and if you stop before you are tired you will be thrown back on” Kuroi followed the instructions not knowing what the machine exactly did but he had heard the lieutenants grumbling about it awhile back. So he stepped on the machine and started running him almost immediate noticed its effects. It was taking his spirit power and fast. He knew that they would be required to do something without spirit power, so a test of endurance. A few students fell off while the attendant. Threw some back on others she just let sit. “A scary woman”, thought Kuroi. Those that had fell off before she now let sit along with 2 more that had collapsed. Kuroi had tried to conserve his spirit power but he thought “the more I run the more spirit power the others regain” so he pushed all of his spirit power to his feet letting it flow into the treadmill and increasing his speed. Finally he collapsed with the others drained of spirit energy while a few students with great spirit energy were doing what he did and conserving it. “Idiots the whole lot of them”, Kuroi thought. The last students fell off the treadmills and were clearly drained while other people were dusting themselves off and standing waiting for instructions.

The attendant waited for the ones who had just fell off to catch their breath and said “please follow me” and Kuroi did exactly that. He saw a room filled with a seemingly difficult obstacle course with full spirit energy but without and dead tired nearly impossible. Kuroi reckoned he had about enough energy to perform about half then he would be out of spirit energy again. When the buzzer rang Kuroi jogged out and started navigating the difficult rope climb as soon as he climbed that he noticed that in a less extreme way the course was doing the same thing as the treadmills he would have to really push to make it to the end. Some of the students moved on to the log roll some failed and climbed up to the other side Kuroi had never encountered a log roll before and thought he could just make it half way then jump. Kuroi found that he had to walk backwards to go forward awkward but manageable and he crossed successfully and then realized he was out of spirit power. He continued to do the spider wall with relative ease. On next obstacle it was a 100 meter free climb to a tower were there was an unknown obstacle in wait. He smiled, yes actually smiled, he knew that this might be awkward to the other shinigami but one of his hobbies was rock climbing. He started one foot in front of the other keep climbing keep going handhold foothold handhold foothold this process seemed like it was taking forever to climb this relatively small wall then h realized why it was so easy to get in a pattern the wall was a slow treadmill! Realizing that he had to pick up the pace he did so. By the time he got to the top he was exhausted.

This next obstacle wouldn’t be very challenging or so it seemed. It was a balance beam about as wide as a curb. He approached it and stepped on it cautious of its effects he slowly made his way over careful not to fall… he made it across without incident. The next obstacle was a sliding board that was quite a distance away from the landing. Too far to ride the board...jump, yes that was the answer… he stood on the board and using the momentum as it hit the ramp jumped and made it to the landing rolling to dissipate the momentum. The next obstacle he evaluated on the fly running at it. It was a really long fireman type slide down pole. He grabbed on and slid, and slid, and slid, and slid on to the safety of the ground, and the end of the course. Like the few others here already he collapsed and breathed heavily, hands burt, and every muscle burned with the lactic acid…

Word count: way too many: 921