Jin and I walked into the mess hall side by side. Every table in the hall had turned into a scene of bickering. Datapads passing between recruits, replays of paired matches cycling on screens, a kid on his feet demonstrating a guard position to two people who clearly thought he was wrong. Three tables down, someone was loudly insisting that Osei’s paired coordination should be disqualified for the first phase fights. His opponent in the debate kept stabbing the air with a spoon.Jin split toward the food line. “Save me a spot at the table, I’ll grab our food.”I didn’t have the energy to argue and nodded, heading off to the table.Park had his datapad propped against a water canteen, cycling through match footage. Tomás was three pages deep in his notebook. Ren and Sato sat across from each other, Sato talking and Ren listening. Hsu was flexing her guard hand, working out the stiffness. Andrew was eating paste with a grim look on his face.Me too, buddy, me too...“Your left side keeps dragging,” Tomás said the moment I sat down.“Yeah, I took a nasty hit to my ribs. Jin had to wrap them up for me.”Sato’s head came up. “She what? Jin? Are you sure we’re talking about the same person?”Jin appeared like a ghost, knocking the back of Sato’s head with a gentle elbow.“What was that for?” Sato cried out in protest.“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Sato,” Jin said, placing a tray in front of me. Sato looked at the tray, looked at Jin, (...)