THE ALPHA PART AND THE BETA PART

18 FEBRUARY, THURSDAY, TRAINING SESSION

The moment I stepped into the training hall, Ben called out, "Princess is here."

When Ben did that, it sounded more like an order than a notification.

"YO, PRINCESS!" The other trainees greeted at once.

Savy drew back at the force of their wolves. Wow, everyone felt strong today. Nice.

"Yo." I raised my hand to greet them. I didn't see Hank or Flynn. {Delta is near}. Okay, thanks Boo... Boo who was regressing back to Wolfie lately. I'm not quite sure why. 

Then Ki entered with Bell, it just just a moment after Savy and me.

"Luna Bell is here." Ki intoned. 

When Ki did that, it sounded like a fancy butler announcing the arrival of someone important.

"Yo, Luna!" The guys called out. 

"What the hell is 'yo'?" Bell growled.

The guys laughed and gathered around him.

"Are you training us today, Luna?" Link asked, "Sheesh... if its anything like the last sesh, we're all going to be in trouble."

"Yeah, go easy on us today, okay Luna?" Jack said, "We're down for our exams next week, we can't be half dead to take them."

"There aren't many of us here today either." Link informed Bell, "Most of the others are skipping the sesh to cram." 

"Yeah, but the ones here. We're the ones aiming for the Elite Rankings." Jack said.

Oh... I looked around. No wonder the wolves felt stronger today - they were the stronger wolves.

"Elite rankings?" Bell asked.

"You don't know?" Link asked.

Right, Bell wasn't from our pack, so he wouldn't know about THE ELITE RANKINGS.

The guys were more than happy to fill Bell in, but in broken pieces of information which didn't do the Elite Rankings any justice. 

Basically, the Elite Rankings was the biggest Warrior test in all of Night Leaf. Every year in Autumn, any warrior wolf above 18 make take part in the ranking games, which was a combination of Obstacle Course, Ring Fight, and Wolf Run. Top 30 warriors got the title of Elite Warriors, and become Patrol leaders and possibly Deltas if they remained ranked long enough and have the skills to contribute to the pack's leadership team. E.g. Flynn and Hank. Elite Warriors also got perks like they were allowed to sign a one year lease for a nice studio apartment in our packhouse at a very affordable rate. I was told the studio apartments were really nice, almost like hotel suites. Elite Warriors and above were also allowed access to the Pack Kitchen. Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner may be pre-ordered. Free flow of coffee, tea, and small snacks throughout the day. Yeah... the free food was a big deal to Night Leaf wolves. Now that Morning Light was merging with us, I think we were going to open up the Elite Rankings to Morning Light wolves this Autumn. I wonder if we would also have more spots - like Top 50? 

Anyway, it was super exciting. I followed the Elite Rankings closely every year, watching as many matches as I could. We had to see it live, at our packhouse. I mean, this wasn't a fight cage. It was like the fight for honor and glory within the pack. It was SUPER COOL AND I LOVE IT. Every year, I would be inspired to work hard at my training so that one day, I could also compete against the best of our pack and be ranked in the Top 30. Dean and I had made a pact to train hard together and do our best - even if we should end up facing off each other - the both of us were going to get to the Top 30 together. I looked around. Dean wasn't here either. Maybe he was late.

If Bell was really the trainer, Dean would be so dead. Bell was in a bad mood tonight and for some reason, it was getting worse by the minute. At first, I had assumed he was having one of those disagreements he usually had with Ki, but now, even surrounded by the other guys, it wasn't getting any better. To his credit, he didn't show it. Dad always said, it was important for an Alpha to keep personal frustrations out of his interaction with his wolves. But you see, Bell was currently unprovoked. Late-coming was very possibly a provocation which would invoke Bell's darkening mood to strike out. 

Okay, I'll be the first to admit that I didn't know Bell that well, but I've met many trainers, and Bell fell in the category of trainers who believed in tough love.

Most of the best trainers were that way. Even the usually gentle Hank was tougher during training sessions... or as Link liked to call it, "sesh."

I made a point to memorize the cooler older teen vocab. Sesh and cram. My two new words of the day.

But I had worried for Dean for naught. Hank came in shortly, bright whistle around his neck. He blew it twice to get our attention, and we gathered around in our Tiers. 

Finally! I got to be next to Bell again! I instinctively breathed in when he came close, but once again, there was no Mate scent, just a jumble of Ki and all the other wolves who were talking to him earlier... but mostly me, since I had jumped on him earlier. Boo felt quite satisfied, {Mine}.

This reminded me that my wolf had a regression glitch going on, but there was nothing I could do. Hank had started the session - I mean, the sesh.

"Alright, listen up." Hank began with his customary greeting, giving us all a false sense of security that tonight was going to be just another Thursday Training session. And then he continued, "I know you guys have exams up next week. Nevertheless, I'm disappointed that only so few of you showed up. Training is something you commit to as a warrior, come rain or shine. Therefore, I applaud you. Your being here today, shows me that you are serious about being a strong warrior. So in return, I will also seriously train you to be the strong warrior that you have come here to be."

At this point, I had a bad feeling in my guts that tonight's sesh was going to kill us, or at least make us wish we were dead. Let's just say, I had some experience with how these pep talks before training sessions worked - they convinced you that you were the one who wanted to be here, and then they punished you for it. I was right too.

"We haven't been working on our routine drills for a while." Hank said. The moment he said "routine drills", there was groaning all around. Me too. It was a reflex reaction. We had been drilled on these routine drills from the time we were old enough to stand upright and kick. 

Here at Night Leaf (and apparently Morning Light too), we had a set of routine drills that all warriors knew. These drills were taught to us as pups, just little movements at first, sometimes even cleverly disguised as songs and games, but then later we would be taught to string these movements in a series of drills. There were two parts to these drills: Part A, the attacking side, and Part B, the defending side. If you put Part A and Part B together, you get a super intense and choreographed fight between two training partners.

I had run Part A for fun on Alpha Jude the other time, Alpha Jude turned out to be an easy target for this type of drill because while he wasn't a bad fighter, he wasn't drilled so he left a lot of openings and he had no idea what move was next in sequence. The magic of a drill was that it wasn't something you learned with your brain, but your body. Once you've mastered it, your body was quite able to attack or defend on its own. Like if a kick was coming from the side, my body would move according to the drill and allow me the most precise dodge that followed with a tight left/right hook, depending on which side the kick was coming from. 

I'm not sure if anyone knew this, but this standard drill that we groan about was actually something from Night Forest. Specifically, it was from a training manual handed down for generations in Grandpa Alpha's family. Only the Alphas and betas and their children were taught. Thus, the original name of the two parts were the Alpha Part and the Beta Part. Dad and Beta Lucas had used it to train the first warriors in our pack. I'm not sure how Grandpa Alpha would feel if he knew that Dad had taught his family's secret training manual to common warrior wolves in our pack... and then later, when Morning Light was in dire straits, I think Dad must have lent them the manual too - because Gamma Endo, Harvey, and all the Morning Light goons moved the same way.

Anyway, there were more secrets to this. At least I think they were secrets, since no one seemed to know about them (either that, or they were all keeping the secret really well). Dad told me about them one day, when he saw me practicing on my own in our backyard. 

"I see you've mastered Part A." Dad sat down on the porch.

"I'm good at Part A." I boasted as I walked over to him, "My trainer said I was a natural."

"What about Part B?" Dad had asked.

"It's okay. I keep mixing it up with Part A." I stopped and shrugged.

Dad patted the empty space on the porch next to him, and I closed the gap and sat down.

"Did you know," Dad told me then, "That Part A and Part B were two parts originally known as the Alpha Part and the Beta Part?"

"Yeah, Dad, you told me." I answered before Dad repeated it all over again.

Dad nodded, "Is that why you only learned the Alpha Part?"

I frowned at my scrapped knees. No, it was because it was hard. I had to work very hard to learn just one part. I fell so many times... especially since I was kicking on a tree trunk, and there was no mat to fall on in our backyard, just grass, and the gritty dirt below. 

"It's not that I'm not trying..." I mumbled to my knees. I'm not sure if Dad heard, but at that moment, my eyes had welled with tears, so I didn't dare speak anymore.

Dad's large hand patted my head, but he wasn't looking at me, "Sam, the Alpha part is only half the moves. The Beta part completes it. Used against each other, there would be no winner. Used together, it is undefeated. My father and his beta had never lost a fight, as long as they fought back to back."

After zenning off, Dad stood up, his large frame a shadow over me. And then he went back into the house.

Since that day, I've wondered if any of my trainers knew about the secret of the Alpha and Beta parts. I learned the B Part even though I didn't perfect it as I did the A Part. But this wasn't because I didn't try. The A Part you could throw out at a sturdy tree, the B Part, you actually needed a training partner who could throw out the A Part at you to really practice the timing - and of course, if you partner couldn't remember the moves or missed the timing, and you didn't want to accidentally actually hurt him and make him cry (Read Dean), it could be a real road block to complete mastery. Dad helped me, some Sunday afternoons - some kids played ball with their dads. I practiced. 

Maybe even back then, I knew I was the alpha. No, to be honest, I didn't. I wasn't the type to think that far. I just felt responsible. This was the secret family fight technique, Grandpa Silas learned it from his dad. Dad learned it from Grandpa Silas, and since I was the only son Dad was ever going to get, I knew it was my job to master this. In fact, I had to be the best at it. I took pride at being the fastest to complete the drill every time... although, most of the time, my only competitor was Dean, so it wasn't really actually anything worth crowing about.

Oh, but now and then, when I sped up suddenly and got a kick in at my trainer. Hahaha. That would be the best feeling.

Anyway, I waited each year for the trainers to teach us how to use Part A and Part B at the same time. But that lesson never came. After we learned Part A, we learned Part B. And then we just took turns to spar Part A against Part B, which turned out to be really good warrior training, but as Dad had told me long ago, there was never a winner. It was just a routine drill that we did over and over and over again.

Today looked like it was going to be Part A VS Part B all over again.

"Today, we will do it a little differently," Hank announced, "I want all of you to pair up with a training partner. You will each execute either A or B. But there would be a 15 minute time limit for each round. You need to start the next round at every whistle. If you finish early, you get a rest until the whistle. Essentially, we're combining our routine drill with a HIIT workout."

More groaning and gnashing of teeth. This was going to be a painfully exhausting sesh.