[ 3 ] 2008

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"You have failed your final test for hand to hand combat."

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In the garden, Dempsey found there were only two other children in the entire facility.

The other people there were nine adults--three nurses, who seemed to be in some sort of trance, and three personal trainers. The other three were teachers who helped them continue their education because they were still so young and needed to go to school. The children later found out that they were real people from the outside world, but that Arthur had hired them and mind controlled them into thinking they had regular jobs after leaving the facilities each afternoon. Arthur visited them too, and brought them presents, but that was rare, as it was known that he was very busy coordinating with the other hunters, and pooling in resources for them to use.

The nurses were to spend the day with them, taking care of them, and making sure they were in good health. They were to send weekly reports of the children's health to Arthur, who then used that information to determine which were the best forms of training for each child. That was what he also had personal trainers for. Each child was assigned one and the trainers would train the children depending on what their special skill was.

The top floor of the facilities was for dorm rooms. Dempsey had been given her own room on the girls' side of the dorms, right next to the only other girl at the facility. Her name was Elaine and she was from France. Dempsey had learned from her that she had been there for almost two years, and that her training would be finishing the following month. From there, Arthur had mentioned that he was to erase her memories of his face for safety reasons. And that he was going to be sending her over to the UK to train with a girl named Naileah, who had graduated from the garden over two years prior. It was going to be one year of training in the field, and then she would be patrolling France as a hunter.

The other person at the garden was a boy named Dieter who was from Germany. He had joined earlier in that same year and would be graduating only six months before Dempsey would. He was more excited than anything about having some company. Ever since knowing Elaine would be leaving soon, Dieter was afraid he would be in the building all by himself.

Dempsey felt like it was way too soon when Elaine graduated from the garden a month later. Arthur had a small ceremony for her and they all had dinner together. He mentioned to Elaine, Dempsey, and Dieter that he had invited the other graduated hunters. Their names were Paul, Rocky, James, and Naileah. According to him, three of them were already well trained and established as hunters in their countries. Only Paul had recently graduated, a month before Dempsey joined the organization, and was currently training with James in Perth. Dempsey had been excited to meet them, since the only other people she saw in the garden were Elaine and Dieter. But the other hunters never showed up, and Arthur excused them by mentioning that the teenagers were always busy.

The first year of her training was spent on hand to hand combat. In order to progress to weapons training, Dempsey was required to defeat Dieter in a fight. Dieter remembered his own training and how he had to defeat Elaine in a fight in order to continue his training. Dempsey had begged Dieter not to go easy on her, warning him that she would be mad at him if he did. But she had tactics and a plan. Since they were allowed to use their powers in the final test, Dempsey planned to turn into a ferocious animal from the beginning.

She and Dieter were thrown into the arena in the garden, a vast white room with white walls and nothing else. Above was a box where their trainers would be watching them and evaluating Dempsey's performance.

As the alarm rang through their ears, signalling them to start, Dempsey took a fighting stance and closed her eyes, focusing all her energy on the moment and the fight that was about to take place. But she had been too slow and soon she felt the sting of a thousand little icicles piercing into her skin. She winced in pain and opened her eyes. Dieter was already charging at her, ice needles shooting from his hands, and he went in for a dive, knocking her feet from under her. Dempsey felt the way her ankle twisted in a way she knew it wasn't supposed to, and the next second she was on the ground with Dieter on top of her.

"Pinned you." He grinned down at her, golden blonde hair tickling her face since he was that close to her.

Within moments the alarm rang again and she heard her trainer's voice through the speaker. "You have failed your final test for hand to hand combat."

Dempsey tried to push her colleague off her and then threw her head back in frustration when he was doing nothing to budge. His weight on her was starting to feel heavy. She was only twelve years old at the time. And she thought that he had the advantage. He was already about to graduate from the garden, and he was older than her. Two years older, she thought to herself bitterly. He was fourteen and spending a lot of time with him as the only two people in the garden, Dempsey had developed a little crush on Dieter. Dieter, on the other hand, was having a hard time deciding if he still had crushes on Paul or Elaine. Dempsey had met Elaine before, but she wondered what Paul was like, since Dieter said wonderful things about him.

Lifting himself off her and holding his hand out for her to take, he said to her in a friendly tone, their competitive spirit from earlier quickly dissipated. "Cheer up, Demps. You have three chances to pass the hand to hand combat test. If you fail it three times, you can't join the organization. Luckily, everyone has passed it so far."

The double doors to the arena opened with a whoosh and in walked Dempsey's personal trainer. Her name was Arabella and she was also being mind controlled to forget everything that happened at that facility after leaving for the day. Her memory was only to be activated when in the garden.

"What happened out there?" Her trainer wondered. "You blanked."

Dempsey looked down on the ground with embarrassment. "I'm sorry. I was just trying to concentrate."

"The enemy isn't going to just sit and wait for you to concentrate. They're just going to lunge at you." Her trainer scolded her, which made Dempsey feel like she wanted to disappear. Looking to Dieter, the trainer added a congratulations. "Good job Dieter."

The hunter nodded his head gratefully and walked past them, dropping a hand on Dempsey's shoulder reassuringly as he left the room. Arabella then informed that they had two weeks to train for the second evaluation test. They were the two weeks that Dempsey had been promised to have completely free, if she passed the hand on hand combat exam. Now she would have to train harder than ever, or they'd start running behind schedule.

-

Dempsey had gone onto pass her hand to hand combat test on the second try, two weeks later. Although, she did feel like Dieter had gone a bit easier on her than he did the first time. But it was also the fact that she had trained non-stop for two weeks, to the point where she was tired and sore every single day. She wanted to make sure that she wouldn't let her trainer and Arthur down. Then she was allowed to start her weapons training.

Two months after she passed her first year of training, another person entered the garden. This one was a boy named Michael who was from Australia. Dempsey felt sorry for him, since he came in with tear soaked eyes and she remembered how she felt when her parents passed. It was a grief that she still had in her heart. There were times when she had nightmares of that night. Maybe, she sometimes thought, if she hadn't been so scared, she might have been able to turn into a bear and helped her family escape the house. Instead, she hid under their bed and watched it all happen.

Because Dieter and Michael were both boys, and were closer in age than her, they got along really well. Whenever they had free time, they'd play video games together, or do activities, while Dempsey was never asked to join them. The few times they did invite her, she felt even worse because they were always having their own conversations together. But two months after Michael's arrival, Dieter graduated from the garden.

It pained him so much to have to leave, since he had made new friends in the garden. But it was said that he was going to be training with Elaine in France, since she had just completed her one year training with Naileah and was required to start putting her training to the test. Dieter was happy about that--being able to see Elaine again--but he also wanted to see Paul. They had been in the garden together about seven months. He begged Arthur to let him do a split training year. Six months with Elaine in France, and six months with Paul in Mexico. Arthur did not allow it because he thought training with Elaine would be a better fit, since Germany was right next to France.

For the rest of that year, it was just Michael and Dempsey in the garden together. The two quickly became like actual siblings. Michael protected her, but they also were often at each other's throats, shouting bad words at each other.

By December, Dempsey had learned to use all kinds of weapons, but Arthur had given her a very special one as a graduation present. A shiny silver gun called a Diamond Rose which was the weapon of choice for all hunters because the bullets were made from titanium and tungsten, and could penetrate any form of shifter shield. A Diamond Rose could also only hurt people with shifter and hunter blood, making it safe for humans. Arthur wanted to avoid having innocent people dying while fulfilling his mission of protecting the people from the shifters.

At her graduation party, she was given her present along with a stack of money, and it was announced that she would be moving to Canada, to train with Rocky for one year before being sent back to her country in order to protect it. Arthur thought that since the countries were right next to each other, they might have a lot of similarities that she might learn to use to her advantage. Arthur also informed her that if she ended up not wanting that life, he would support her departure as well. But Dempsey assured him that there was no other place she'd rather be than with the hunters. They had become her family when she had no one.

Rocky had shown up to the ceremony, invited by Arthur, where he met both Dempsey and Michael. He and Arthur had been talking at first and Rocky mentioned how he actually kind of missed the garden because they could not leave the facility and it was secluded from the outside world. Nowadays he had things to do every single night, and often had to sleep in the day time. Night time was when shifters were most active and he wanted to make that information useful to himself.

When he met Dempsey, she was thirteen and he was fifteen, the same age as Dieter, she thought to herself. He was nice to her and treated her well. He informed her that he was excited and ready to start with their training, and that she would very much like Canada. A thought popped into Dempsey's head that he really was like people said Canadians were. He was so nice and polite, nothing like her snotty older brother Michael who thought it was funny to put paint in her body wash. She had gone all last week with red skin, and her nurses almost thought she had a big allergic reaction to something.

They were relieved when she explained to them that it had just been Michael's doing.

She eventually got back at him though when she locked him out of the dorm floor and he had to sleep in one of the class rooms down stairs for one night.

Her two years at the garden were memorable ones. But now she was to move onto a new segment of her life. She was going to Canada to train in the field for one more year, and then she was ready to start hunting shifters.

-

chapter three for this story. chapter four will be back in 2006 again because its going to be about paul. so stay tuned for that.

we're going to see the moment that he joins the hunters.

in his time line, he and dempsey won't meet for about another five years. but im excited to write about them meeting because they're one of my favorite ships. because i made paul such a serious boy with a resting bitch face all the time. but deep down he's caring of his friends and dempsey. and he's a total sweetheart.

kind of like my crush. he has a resting bitch face, but he's sweet and sensitive as hell.

please tell me how you're liking this story. and please let me know if you'd all like backstories on some of the other characters. i'll probably write a one shot book where i post them all. unless people want another spin off, which i am down to write. im obsessed with spin offs lately.

-clary