The Way Of The Jungle (chapter three, read chapter 1)

When he finished eating dinner, a simple but tasty meal of bread and meat, Kyle fell into bed around the time it got dark, and fell right to sleep. Possibly due to the fact that he had gone to bed early the previous night, Kyle awoke early the next morning when no one seemed to be up. Entering the dining hall, Kyle counted three persons, all of whom were trainees, eating at separate tables, and decided to see what was going on outside. Walking somewhat sluggishly out of the building, he saw several people by the training area, and decided to see who they were and what they were doing. When he made his way over to them, he noted that all of them were veterans, two of whom were Mike and Gramm. He studied them and the other veterans for about three minutes, and then started to mimic their actions. One veteran was ascending the bamboo tower as fast as he could, pausing a moment, and then racing back to the bottom. When he finished this routine he would ascend halfway, and race horizontally from one end to another and back. Another veteran was alternating between clap pushups, and sit ups, using a large section of tree trunk to add extra weight. A third was running up and down the steepest hill in the village, and Kyle wondered to himself how long he had been running, for his cloths were drenched in sweat, but he didn't look the least bit tired.

So, ignoring the veterans who were sparring and training with spears, Kyle imitated all of the exercises previously listed, at a much slower rate, as soon as he was finished doing pull ups. As he was about to go to breakfast, he noticed the veteran who had been doing pushups was stretching his muscles. Audaciously, Kyle inquired as to what stretching does, and if it trains muscle. The veteran turned around coolly and commanded him simply to try and touch his back. Cautiously, Kyle reached walked around behind the veteran and poked his hand at his back as fast as he could. Without even turning his head, the man, who was about twenty five, caught Kyle's hand and twisted it into a wrist lock. This event took place in a split second, and Kyle was awed at how one moment it looked like he had the upper hand, and the next, this man had him at his mercy. He explained to Kyle that stretching increases flexibility, which can prove to be a significant advantage in combat. So, with a new respect for stretching, Kyle learned how to improve the flexibility of all the main muscle clusters in his body, and finally went to breakfast.

At breakfast, Kyle sat with a group of trainees who were somewhat less talkative and excitable than the day before, most likely because they were tired and exhausted. This however did not mean they were silent.

"Why are you all sweaty?" one boy asked.

"I woke up early, decided to do some exercise," Kyle retorted.

"You know Mike's probably gonna' work us just as hard today if not worse than yesterday right?"

"Yeah."

"Oh I see, the tough guy act," the boy said, and then chuckled softly, which confused Kyle who had thought he was being modest. "My name is Jimmy, what's yours?"

"Kyle," he said, as they shook hands halfheartedly.

He spent the rest of breakfast talking comfortably with Jimmy, until they broke into groups again, and he gave his full attention to Gramm. In fact, everyone was paying close attention to Gramm, who decided that that day was a good one to teach spear crafting. This excited every trainee greatly, and they were all delighted to find that not only were they learning to make spears, there were knives involved. Gramm piled ten white handmade knives next to a pile of about thirty strait hard branches that had each been snapped to about five feet long. It was not long after Kyle made the realization that the knives were made of bone that someone asked, "those aren't human bones are they?"

"Of course not," Gramm responded gruffly, "human bones are too weak, these are boneshifter bones."

The look on the boy's face went swiftly from concerned, to assured, and then suddenly back to concerned, when he realized what Gramm had insinuated.

"Now listen up," said Gramm, "what you're going to do is take the knife, and shave strips of wood off of each side of the stick, so that you get a spear that's equally shaven at its point, like a pencil." With that, he handed out the sticks and the knives, and everyone got started, passing the knives around so that everyone would eventually get a turn with one of them. Kyle found that the wood was hard, and he soon got blisters on his hands from whittling it. In addition, most boys whittled it too thin at the end, and ended up with a weak point, that broke easily. Kyle himself managed to find a nice balance between sharp and flimsy, but was dismayed to find that when he poked his finger with the tip, it drew no blood whatsoever, and in fact, didn't even hurt. Still wondering how one could possibly be injured with such a weapon that seemed to either break, or be too blunt, Kyle passed his knife to the boy next to him and tried to recite all the plants and animals he had learned the previous day. When they rotated groups, everyone was still thinking about spear making, which aggravated Nicholas so much, that he angrily ordered them all to thrust their new spears into the earth and not touch them until the class concluded. Once he was finished helping a few of the weaker trainees to get their spears embedded far enough in the ground to remain standing, he began the class by teaching everyone about an herb that he said would paralyze you if it got in your blood stream.

"Can we put that on our spears?" someone asked.

"No, it's for putting on the end of a blow dart."

"Will we learn to use blow darts?"

"No, now as I was saying-"

"But why can't we put it on spears?"

"Because with spears, you go for the kill, they're not made to be gentle with, so if you're doing it right, your enemy should be dead before the poison has time to work. Now will you just focus for a second? Right now we're learning about poison." Kyle heard him mutter something that sounded like an expletive and then the word, ADHD, and then continue. After he was finished describing a few other poisons, Nicholas appeased the spear happy crowd by discussing the different types of wood that can be found in the jungle, including the one they had constructed spears from. After the class was over, Kyle's group moved to the jungle combat class, which no one was looking forward to. All of this changed however, when Mike announced that they would be learning how to use the spears they had just made. Before anyone did anything, he told the group to only use the blunt side when doing training exercises, to prevent any "premature deaths". After this brief safety instruction, Mike led the group to a row of training dummies, that were really just tall planks of wood, with another plank across each one, to resemble arms. Soon the group was learning all about each type of spear thrust, and each boy was assigned a dummy, and told to pierce their spear through it. Everyone began hitting the dummies as hard as they could with the spears, but no one was having any luck whatsoever. Mike meanwhile, was walking back and forth critiquing them all, and everyone was snickering at the person to their right, until Mike got to them, and they realized that they were just as incompetent.

"Come on! Put your body into it! Is that the best you can do? Your technique is good, the only problem is that you're a wimp!"

Mike reminded Kyle of a drill sergeant he had seen in a war movie, and visualized him wearing an army uniform. While Kyle was imagining this, one of the boys managed to embed his spear in the dummy, so Mike came over to acknowledge this achievement.

"What's your name son?"

"Bill," he said proudly.

"What were my instructions Bill?"

"To stab the spear through the dummy."

"So what part of through did you not understand!?"

"Sorry, I'll try harder."

"Halfway will get you killed boy. You can't spear an animal halfway, or it'll go into a frenzy and shred you to pieces. Now do fifteen pushups!"

"Yes sir... uh Mike," said Bill, who began doing pushups.

"As for the rest of you," Mike said, turning around to face the others, "since Bill here was only half of a weakling, he does fifteen; everybody else drop and give me thirty, right now!"

With much groaning, and inaudible complaining, the group painstakingly did thirty pushups, and, as was a habit of Mike's, the ones who did not complete theirs were punished. They stayed and practiced spear thrusts for another half hour until they broke for lunch, during which Kyle's group discussed excitedly all that had happened throughout the day. When lunch ended, which it seemed to Kyle to do very quickly, mainly because he was getting used to the group, and because he was exhausted, they filed out to jungle zoology with Phil. When they all arrived, Phil taught them about three jungle animals who seemed particularly vicious, and then paused dramatically to say, "Everyone listen up, because this next one is the most important. The creature I'm about to describe will make the last three sound like garden pests." This got everyone's attention, for they were all eager to hear about whatever could possibly be worse than an animal that shoots out tendrils to rip ones limbs off.

"This animal is far worse than anything in the jungle, if you see it, or hear it, run, and pray it loses interest. No one has ever killed one, and few have survived who have ever seen or engaged one. This thing eats anything it wants to, but nothing eats it. It's the king of the jungle, and we call it the nasheek."

"What does it look like?" Someone asked. Phil drew a picture on the stone that would have made a five year old's drawings look like Picasso.

"It's a cat?"

"no, it looks more like a dog."

"Oh! I thought it was a horse."

"It's not a cat!" said Phil angrily.

"than what is it?" asked Kyle.

"well, it's like a jaguar. It has spots, and we know there are more than one, because when I saw it, it was blue, but others have seen an orange one."

"so what's so scary and terrible about a cat?"

"It's not a cat, and if you ever fought one you would know exactly what's so terrible about it. This thing has claws that rip through tree trunks like wet paper. It has perfect night vision, and it usually kills by crushing it's prey's skull in one bite. The reason no one has ever killed one is because it's faster than the blink of an eye, and its fur is damn near impenetrable."

"Impenetrable fur? You're joking right?" someone said mockingly.

"I'm not joking, people have tried stabbing it with knives, spears, and poison darts, but everything just breaks. The nasheek is the baddest animal in this godforsaken jungle, and if it decides to eat you, you had better hope you're fast, because speed, agility and luck are the only reasons I survived it's attack."

With that, the class ended, leaving them all to think about the nasheek, and what Phil had said about it. During siesta, Kyle practiced all different ways to move about on the tower, from side to side, to diagonally, until finally tiring out, and taking a ten minute break. After his break, Kyle did pull ups, finding he was slightly stronger than the day before, and then did suicide sprints up and down the hill. When he was finished stretching, Kyle was thoroughly worn out. He ate dinner and collapsed into bed, only to begin his routine again the next morning.