Machine Gun Princess, day 10

It didn't take long for the downside of being the first machine gunner of the Reunification to rear its head: actually having to carry the Thunderbolt around on marches.  It was three times the weight of the Cleaver and the ammo belts came in fat drums that didn't easily fit in any of her uniform's pockets.  Then again, Nowakowski carried two boxes of ammo lashed across her back, plus her own gun, plus her own ammo, and everyone on her squad had to carry an extra drum for her.  It was a burden they all shared, and that made it a little easier.
Usually made it easier.  Depending on who she worked with it just made them snippier at her.  That she could understand, too, 'cause fifty rounds of rifle ammo in a steel can wasn't exactly the lightest thing in the kit.
The next month hardly took any time at all.  The basics of being a soldier had been drilled into them, and now she realized why their exercises were called that: they had to be etched in.  She could march with her eyes closed now, moving on the sound of her comrades' feet and the declarations of the Sergeant, and she could practically feel where her machine gun was pointed at all times.  She was getting better at sleeping on command, forcing herself to melt into her stiff bunk or rough bedroll or bumpy patch of dirt whenever it was lights out.  It was getting easier to automate her actions, even the most complex, and when somebody started shooting at her she wouldn't take so much as a second thought to look for cover and respond in kind.
If.  If somebody started shooting at her.
Nowakowski was soon the only thing she worried about.  She'd gone from brusque to effectively mute.  She'd gone the entire next month of training without saying anything more complex than affirmatives or negatives.  And writing rather intently in her journal every night.  She wondered... but wondering was as far as she got.
Naturally, the two had been moved to their own set of bunks closer to the barracks heater.  This was both more comfortable and less; more for reasons she hardly even needed to think about, harder because it meant hearing Nowakowski's frenzied writing and wondering, just so, what was going on up there.  Maybe it was nothing.  After all, Irenka drew in her journal every night--her comrades in arms, parts of camp, places from home, iconographs of the Seven Crowns, herself astride a mountain of slain foes with her Thunderbolt blazing.  Perfectly innocent.  Maybe she was just a silent person.  Nothing wrong with that.
Still.  She worried.
On a breezy day when the sun was warm for early winter, every soldier who'd raised their hand during the queen's speech was gathered out in the field to the east of Icemelt, along with anyone who wanted to watch.  Thus, everyone who didn't want a spirit buddy was still out to watch the wannabe-spirit-buddies try their hand at it.
Sgt. Stolarz discussed affairs with the spirit wardens.  Irenka had seen spirit wardens a few times before, but they were some weird-looking people.  They wore broad straw hats and pointed straw masks with no clear eye holes, or eye holes in the wrong place, and draped every inch of their body with bright cloth, exposing only their fingers.  Some of them were shaking or chanting; others were chatting amongst themselves, passing the time.
"Right, then!" Stolarz said, turning to face the gathered crowd.  "Fair warning, ladies and gentlemen: being a magi is not an easy business.  Everything you have learned thus far has braced you for the task of being a soldier.  As a soldier you are expected to anticipate horrifying acts of violence carried out on your person; today you shall either prove yourself worthy of bearing a spirit beast's powers into battle, or test the limits of your ability to suffer."
She cleared her throat.
"Alright.  Who's up first?"
Stawski, to nobody's surprise, was the first up.  Two months of training and forced marching and a soldier's diet had done a lot to shape her up, her fat hardening nto suet and her muscles going from defined by basic effort to hardened for carrying herself into battle and propelling herself at poor, sad sons of bitches who didn't anticipate her speed or strength.  She'd already proved herself excellent with the Clawhammer, and hardly a day went by when she didn't speak about going Boiler.
She positioned herself in the center of the circle of soldiers.  The spirit wardens prepared her, pulling her shirt up to her ribs and preparing the stake.  "Stawski," Stolarz said, "the spirit we're hammering into you is a rumble worm.  If you pass today, and you're intent on rolling Boiler, you'll be shipping out to Fort Wenty in the morning.  You think you can hack it with the psychopaths at Wenty?"
"Seargent, two words for you," Stawski said.  "Blaze it~!"
"That's the spirit, soldier.  Pun intended."  The leader of the spirit wardens, or so Irenka guessed from the flatness and elaborate weave of their mask, positioned the stake just above Stawsk's navel.  "This will be roughly a fifty percent infusion of a kid rumble worm's power.  Are you ready?"
"Yes, seargant!"
Stolarz gestured.  The leader of the wardens raised a small wooden mallet and brought it down, sending the stake halfway nto Stawski's belly, bloodless and seamless, as if she were born with it sticking out.  Stawski made a "hurf!" noise, the wind smashed out of her lungs.  The wardens hastily backed off, as did Stolarz.
"Soldier, can you stand?" Stolarz said.
"Of--"  Stawski had already bitten her lip, blood trickling down.  Slowly, she raised her head.  Or perhaps that was the intent.  She rocketed into a seating position, braced herself against the ground to keep from flinging herself further.  With a series of small gestures exaggerated into ludicrous sweeping movements, she maneuvered her way to her feet.  She moved like she was full of energetic puppies, twitchy and clumsy, but she managed a wiggly, loose walk at a pace which was almost casual around the circle of trod grass.  "He-e-ey there," she said, mindful of her lips and tongue, "look at what I can do-o-o."
She went from the perimeter of the grass to the center in a wide, irregular spiral.  Once she reached the center, she squatted, then kicked off, launching herself a good three stories in the air, fitting in a couple of backflips at the height of her leap, before landing with a whump and an explosion of sod.  "Woo!" she said, and the wardens closed in, signalling and nodding.
"That's a winner!" Stolarz said, and applause went around the circle.  The spirit wardens inched the stake out of Stawski's belly, a clean stake popping free from uninjured skin.  The camp Dove stepped into their place, tending to Stawski's wound.  Stawski didn't seem too worried; she looked downright blissful.
One by one the next candidates took their turns.  Most of them were not as lucky as Stawski.  One of the men dislocated his arm trying to push himself off the ground.  One of the women wrenched her back out turning to respond to a taunt from the crowd.  Another guy tried to replicate Stawski's jump, only to stick the landing poorly and snap both his legs.  That was hard to watch.
"Nowakowski!" Stolarz declared.  "You're up!"
Nowakowski, who had been at Irenka's side the entire time, gawped.  "Excuse me, Sergeant?"
"You're up, Nowakowski.  Did your hearing go out from all that machine gun fire?"
"N-no, Sergeant.  I'm--in."  She hiked to the center of the grass.
"You can do it!" Irenka shouted.  "You'll do great!"
"I thought..." Nowakowski said as the wardens lay her down.  "That I wouldn't be allowed.  Aren't I assistant gunner?"  Her voice cracked.  This really had been the most she'd spoken in weeks.
"You are.  Unless you're a Rumbler or a Boiler, we don't do magi as their own class anymore, Nowakowski.  You'll be an assistant gunner and whatever it is you wind up as."  Stolarz chuckled.  "Though if you were thinking of going Rumbler, maybe they could pencil you in as assistant gunner anyhow.  You could even swing two of those Thunderbolts around like a cowboy.  Wouldn't that be fun?"
The brief bloom of hope on Nowakowski's face had faded to guarded neutrality.  The spirit wardens said something in their low voices and shuffled away.  Stolarz followed suit.  For a long moment, Nowakowski lay on the grass, breathing in slowly.
Perhaps she intended to dramatically leap to her feet, or pull off one of those martial arts moves she had used so well on Stolarz.  Whatever it was she intended to do, there was a flurry of kicked-up dirt clods and sprays of grass alongside a grotesque snapping sound, like a strong branch split by a machete.  Nowakowski lay in a tangled heap, her right shin split not quite down the middle and jutting free from her leg, an ominous bulge in her thigh likewise.
"Oh, hell," Stolarz said.  The Dove and wardens both rushed Nowakowski--and Irenka, too, before anyone could tell her to stop.  Or were interested in telling her to stop.
"Osanna!" Irenka shouted.
Osanna Nowakowski was whimpering on the ground, her every movement was joined by a new set of pops and cracks.  The wardens tried to roll her on her back and were forced away wth each surge and twitch; she was too packed with kinetic energy, radating heat like an open oven.  The Dove couldn't get any closer herself.  The leader of the wardens barked out something in their language, and Stolarz interpreted.
"She can't ease off the throttle," Stolarz said.  "It's full force or nothing.  The stake's being worked in from muscular action--"  She indicated.  The stake was indeed vanishing, bit by bit, into Osanna's stomach.  "--if it goes in all the way, it'll affect her automatic tissues too.  That... that won't end well."
Osanna's eyes were locked on Irenka, incredulous, pained, bloodshot.
"'eeh 'ee," she whimpered.
Irenka closed her eyes and lunged for Osanna, one hand on her side, the other going for her navel.  Putting her hand on Osanna's skin was like touching a hot skillet on a piston; her hand blasted off an instant after.  Her hand brushed Osanna's stomach and she felt her ring finger snap back as if punched.  Was it broken?  It hurt like hell either way.
"Osanna!  Osanna, listen to me!" Irenka shouted.  "Hold your breath, now!"
Osanna tried, a slow, ragged process.
"Hold your breath, don't look away from me, don't look away from my eyes--"  She pointed at her eyes with her left hand, saw that her ring finger wasn't moving with the rest of them, and felt terror creep into her heart.  Louder, more strained, she said, "--and don't think.  Just concentrate.  Concentrate on my voice."
Osanna tried to comply.  Her eyes twitched and spun wildly.  Now, only now, did Irenka notice the fine scars around her eyes.
She was still moving, but she was moving less.  Her torso undulated, but involuntarily, with the motion of her breath and the agony feeding up from her legs, and when she was breathing in, the stake sliding ever further into her, Irenka grabbed for it, and planting her palm aganst Osanna's side and yanking as hard as she could with the resultant muscular spasm the stake ripped free and Irenka was sent flying back.
The stake was red-hot in her hands, like the wrong end of a fire poker.  She dropped it to the grass, and realized all her fingers on her right hand were present and accounted for.  Oh thank the gods.  Oh, blessed be.
The Dove lay Osanna flat, crying and spitting antiseptic onto her torn bone.  She lowered her mouth to it, her long, many-fingered, saw-toothed tongue descending to work it back into place.  The wardens were examining her for aftershocks and seeking the removed stake.
"Here!" Irenka said.  "Over... over here.  I have it.  It's there.  Just... you know... pick it up... when you're done..."  She lay her head in the grass.  "Or when you need it."
Her head hurt a lot for some reason.  Maybe if she just let it hurt for a while--