Odd One Out

The emerging talents. People who are chosen from newly recruited personnel or not fully experienced soldiers who are believed to have a natural potential for combat. They are offered a severe schedule of training and instruction on fighting skills.

On that afternoon Josiah was arriving in the middle of the daily paired practice.

He was in a large room, together with the other faces, waiting for the instructor to arrive.

A few faces inside there were familiar.

The teenage boy several years older than him he saw whispering at his back when he first arrived the army was one of them. But his friend wasn't there.

That boy who smiled when Koda scolded him in the room was also there.

All in all, it seemed none of the faces there were very friendly toward him. And that's probably because of his age.

Not many eight-years-olds make it to the selected group in one day just like that. In fact, the teenage boy around his thirteens seemed to be the second youngest. Apart from that, there was also a