Colonel Trenton sat behind his desk, hands knit together in front of him, a scowl on his face. I stood at attention and he did not offer me a seat.

“Are you trying to test my patience?” He asked

“No sir,” I replied though I wasn’t sure if his question had been rhetorical or not.

“Are you trying to undermine my authority?”

“No sir.”

“Are you trying to build discontent among my soldiers?”

“No sir.”

“Then why are you going around complaining about your situation and trying to get them to feel similarly?”

I wanted to deny it but he clearly knew about my recent conversations. In hindsight it was probably really obvious what I was doing and it wouldn’t have been that hard to listen in on those conversations.

“Well, Nayak?” Colonel Trenton prompted me after a few moments of uncomfortable silence.

“I’m sorry sir,” was all I could think of to say.

“We’ve made some significant changes around here for you, the least you could do is give it a chance.”

“Yes sir,” I replied.

“If you keep this up there will be consequences,” he warned, though I noted that he didn’t say what those consequences would be and wondered what sort of punishment they would devise for me. Peeling potatoes didn’t seem quite like the likely scenario for some reason. “Dismissed,” he said and waved me away.

I saluted and left. As I made my way out to the firing range where my platoon was supposed to report to for training, I wondered if Goldberg or Otis had reported me, or if there were other means that Colonel Trenton was using to listen in on my conversations. There were supers with enhanced hearing so it was possible there were some of them around the base just listening to us all. There were security cameras all over the place as well so perhaps they also had mundane listening devices throughout the base too. In the end it didn’t really matter how they had found out. I couldn’t go about looking for others who were discontent with how things were in such an open manner. I had to be more subtle.

At the firing range we were all issued a rifle and then sat down at a number of long tables. We were drilled on how to dismantle, clean, and reassemble them with the expectation that we ought to be able to break down and put it back together in just a couple of minutes. I had to hold in my own laughter at the thought of handling so many pieces, many of them tiny and quite fragile even without my enhanced strength.

After the demonstration, I set to work taking my gun apart. I completely gave up on going for speed and instead took my time, meticulously handling each part, laying them all out in order, and then putting it back together. I manged to only break three pieces which I considered a significant accomplishment.

“You’ve ruined this firearm,” the drill instructor commented when he saw my work. “Get another one and try again.”

I obeyed, turning in the broken rifle and was issued another one. I went even slower this time, carefully sliding the pieces apart and only using the slightest amount of force necessary. Everyone else was moving quite quickly, especially the speedster in our platoon, and it was a bit intimidating while trying work so slowly. Thankfully, the drill instructor seemed to acknowledge that pushing me to go fast would only result in more destroyed rifles.

This time I only broke a spring. The gun was still inoperable but considering the ease of replacing the spring I counted this as a success.

“Try again, Nayak,” the drill instructor said.

Again, I turned in the damaged firearm and got another one to practice on. I felt it was rather pointless having me do these drills since I wouldn’t be using rifles, or any firearms really since they were far too fragile in my grasp. Still, this was better than being shot at or blown up so I kept my complaints to myself.

It took five tries before I finally succeeded in disassembling and reassembling the rifle without damaging it. Everyone else was, by this time, competing to see who could do it the fastest. The slowest of them could break down their gun and put it back together four or five times in the time it took me to do it once.

“Do it again, Nayak,” the drill instructor prompted me after my one successful breakdown of the rifle. “I want you to see consistency from you.”

I tried again, and failed. There were certainly a lot of rifles in the crate that had been provided but at this rate I was going to burn through them all in no time. We spent the next hour or so running through this exercise. By the end of it, I had managed to correctly break down and put back together three rifles. All the others were broken in some way or other.

“Alright,” the drill instructor shouted out to all of us, “time for some target practice.”

We were each handed an ammo clip and then lined up along the firing range. Paper targets were already set out for us. We were given some instruction on how to aim since a number of us had never shot a firearm before and then set to work practicing our aim. The rifles were set to single shot for now but the speedster made it still sound like their gun wwas on full automatic. My rifle lasted all of three shots before my trigger hand crushed it.

“Get another one, Nayak,” the drill instructor said.

I couldn’t help but shake my head as I turned in yet another ruined weapon.

“Something on your mind, Nayak?” the drill instructor asked, his voice full of warning.

“No, drill sergeant,” I said at once.

“Good, now get back to it.”

I did, and was pleased that at least my grouping was decent, even though I had to stop every few rounds to get a new gun.

“Nayak,” the drill instructor called out after my fifth rifle, “are you trying to see how many you can break today?”

“No drill sergeant,” I replied.

“Then figure out how to shoot them without breaking them!”

“Yes drill sergeant.”

I didn’t bother arguing that I was already trying not to break them since I’d seen what happened to those how did try to argue with their drill instructors. Instead, I did what I always had to do in times like this and slowed down, focused on what I was doing, and tried really hard not to tighten my grip any more than I had to. I felt like I was going to drop the rifle, or that it would kick out of my grip, but it was just because of how strong I was that it felt that way. In truth I was still probably holding the gun more tightly than anyone else at the range.

I managed to empty the clip without breaking the gun, but then that left me with a new problem. I’d never gotten this far and as I looked at the gun, I couldn’t remember how to eject the magazine. Carefully, I set the gun down and began looking it over. There were only so many buttons and switches on the gun that it could be but they were all small and fragile. I turned the gun over to see if anything on the other side looked like the magazine release.

After narrowing down my options to just two possible buttons, I pressed ever so slowly on the first one. The magazine clicked. I breathed out a sigh of relief and slid the magazine out of the rifle.

“Reload, Nayak!”

I jumped, startled by the drill instructor who was standing right behind me and I crushed both the magazine and the rifle.

“Learn to control that grip strength, Nayak,” the drill instructor said. “What will you do if you’re out in the field and you break your gun?”

“I’ll throw rocks,” I replied before I could catch myself and knew at once I was going to be in trouble.

“What was that?” the drill instructor turned on me at once.

“Nothing, drill sergeant,” I replied.

“No, you said something, Nayak, what was it?”

“I said I’d throw rocks.”

“Is your aim so good with a rock that you don’t need a gun?” the drill instructor asked, though he didn’t wait for me to respond. “And what if there aren’t any rocks around? You gonna throw sand? Snowballs?”

I was standing at this point, looking straight ahead and unsure of what I should say. The drill instructor was right up in my face and he motioned for the soldier who was issuing us the rifles and ammo to come over. It was only then that I noticed the two buckets he was carrying. One was full of rocks, the other was full of sand.

“Can you hit that far target with a rock?” the drill instructor asked, taking the two buckets from the soldier and placing them on the table in front of me. “Go ahead, lets see if your aim is as good with a rock as it is with a rifle.”

I picked up a rock and looked out at the target. Without a scope it was indeed a tiny target. I knew my aim wasn’t good enough to reliably hit it directly from this range but I also knew something about objects that were moving sufficiently fast. I didn’t need to be overly precise. Close enough would do. I cocked my arm and let fly with the rock. The sonic boom was so loud it even made my ears hurt. Even though we were all wearing ear protection, the drill instructor and everyone else at the range clapped their hands over their ears and ducked down instinctively. In truth, my rock missed by a few feet but the target was torn to shreds nonetheless.

“Healer needed at the firing range!” the drill instructor barked into his radio, clutching at his bleeding ears.

Only then did I realize I’d just burst everyone’s eardrums. I sank down onto my seat, embarrassed at how I’d failed to realize this was what would happen. If the sonic boom was going to be strong enough to do that to the target, it would be even stronger right here where I threw the rock in the first place.

The healer arrived moments later and before long, everyone was fine again, relatively speaking.

“You do that again and I’ll have you running laps until you collapse,” the drill instructor shouted at me.

“Yes drill sergeant,” I said.

“What would you do if you only had sand or dirt?” the drill instructor asked after collecting himself.

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

“Can you compress it into a rock?” the drill instructor asked.

I looked at the bucket of sand and took a handful. I squeezed it as hard as I could. The sand held together, though it felt fragile in my hands, weaker than a regular rock at least.

“Everyone get back,” the drill instructor shouted, “Nayak’s going to throw again.”

The platoon obeyed and I waited until they were a good distance away and the drill instructor called for me to throw. This time, the sonic boom wasn’t as loud and the ball of sand broke apart before it reached the target, instead peppering it like a shotgun. Still lethal but only if the target wasn’t wearing any body armor.

“Try again,” the drill instructor shouted over to me.

I made another ball of sand, crushing it as hard as I could with both hands this time. It formed into a shape reminiscent of a flying saucer. I threw it a bit harder this time and the sonic boom echoed across the base. This time, not only did the ball of sand hold together but my aim was true. The paper target evaporated, along with the metal frame holding it. The resultant explosion threw dirt high into the air.

“Well color me impressed, Nayak,” the drill instructor said as he and the rest of the platoon returned. “I still want you to master handling firearms but I think we’ll need to add in some throwing practice for you as well. Now go get a rifle and stop breaking everything you touch.”

“Yes drill sergeant.”

I still broke six more rifles before we finished our time at the range.