53- A Gohnad by any other name...

  7/3/5/4353 M.A.C - Niwut- Early Morning

  "Good morning!"

  Someone called out from outside as Doro and his family enjoyed their breakfast.

  Who would come by this early now that Sarima lives here?

  "Must be this week's legionnaire. Why don't you go greet them?"

  Oh right, it's Seventhday!

  Doro left the dining table and went to open the door.

  "Hello. Is this where a 'Doro Gal Khetepsa' lives?"

  "Yes. That is me. Are you here for the request I posted at the HQ?"

  A tall and lanky young man peered down at Doro dubiously as he held onto a scrap of paper in one hand.

  "Seriously? I thought I was hired as a training partner, not a babysitter..."

  The young man sighed and stayed outside the threshold, muttering to himself as if Doro wasn't there.

  "This is gonna be a bust for the workout, but I guess at least I get a meal out of it..."

  I was going to invite you to join us at the breakfast table, but if you are going to be like that...

  "Hey kid, what's for lunch?"

  The man asked Doro bluntly, not even bothering to make an attempt at hiding his true intentions.

  Yeah, don't think I'm giving this guy the token.

  "Not sure, but it'll be tasty and filling. We hosted a Decanus recently and they had nothing but praises. Good enough for such an esteemed legionnaire as yourself?"

  The man winced at the verbal jab and hardened his gaze.

  "A Decanus? That doesn't mean anything, some of those guys are useless bastards."

  "If you can be useless and still get promoted to Decanus, why aren't you one?"

  Meh, I'm a nine-year-old boy, I can get away with being a pratt.

  "Suddenly, I feel like training you won't be so boring..."

  The legionnaire's expression turned into a sadistic grin as he seemed to have found some form of motivation for the job at hand after all.

  ***

  "Alright. Lesson number one for any legionnaire. Build endurance!"

  "The last legionnaire told me it was dodging."

  "If you fall behind and don't reach the battle in time, are you planning on dodging ghosts while your contubernia is out fighting the enemy?"

  The legionnaire made a mark in the ground with the butt of his spear 150 feet down the backstreet to the right of the door, then came back around and made another 150 feet to the left.

  "Uh, I'm not sure I'll join the free legion. If I do, they would probably put me in a specialized logistics contubernium because of my abilities, not a combat one."

  "Specialists still need to pass basic training, and that includes marching. Now on you go; run!"

  "Uh, I overworked my muscles and just recovered recently..."

  "Ok, walk then."

  Glad that wor-

  "Faster!"

  Ok, guess I'm not getting away with it entirely.

  Doro sped up to a brisque walk, but the legionnaire was not placated and yelled out again.

  "Faster, you laggard! You are lucky I'm not making you carry supplies if you want to be in logistics. Think of all the legionnaires who will get slaughtered if you don't get what they need to them in time!"

  "I'd just use a vehicle to get there faster then!"

  "What if it breaks down? The one tool a legionnaire will always have at hand is their own body!"

  Damn him! I know he just wants to bully me into a death run, but his logic maths out...

  Doro sped up again, taking larger and faster steps; any faster, and he would be outright jogging. Doro made it to the left mark, then to the right mark, and then made it back to the door and stopped.

  "So, how many times do you want me to do this?"

  The legionnaire let out an evil laugh as he responded to Doro's innocent question.

  "Times? You are doing this until lunch! I'm not evil though; you can have a five-minute rest every twenty times you step on a mark. I would normally make it 10, but you are walking after all."

  Twenty times? At about 300 feet between the marks, with imperial feet being nearly exactly a third of a meter...The two friggin kilometers between rests! This guy really didn't like what I said earlier.

  Doro was about to ask for a reprieve, but the smirk on the man's face made him think it would be pointless. As if to add insult to injury, as soon as Doro had begun running again, the legionnaire dipped into the house and returned with a chair. The man casually sat down, crossed his legs, and retrieved a pouch of roasted seeds from the side of his dirty and tarnished plastron.

  "Huff...Huff...What is your name anyway?"

  Doro slowed his pace as he approached the legionnaire, hoping his strategy would go unpunished and earn him a short reprieve.

  "The name is Gohnad; remember it well! You'll definitely hear ballads recounting my heroic deeds in the future."

  *PFFFT*

  Gohnad!? Really? Oh god, if only his parents knew.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  To the people of this world, the name Gohnad sounded like any other name, but that specific sequence of syllables had a very clear meaning to Doro, who had grown up speaking American English.

  The legionnaire thrust the rear end of his spear between Doro's legs, causing him to stumble forward. He hadn't had much time to practice since his lesson with Karo due to his recovery, but he still managed to pull off a decent roll as he fell to the ground, sapping most of the momentum from the impact by redirecting it forward.

  What the hell!?

  Doro shot an angry stare at Gohnad, but the man just looked down at a prone Doro and clapped.

  "Nice recovery. If you slow down or let your mind wander, I'll do it again. You never know when you might get ambushed during a march to stay focused."

  Friggin Gohnad!

  "At least, now that I know your name, It makes it easier to cuss you out in my mind!"

  ***

  It had now been an hour, and although the exercise was wearing Doro down, he was still in a much better state than he should have been, to Gohnad's visible displeasure. About five minutes into the ordeal, Doro had come up with a plan inspired by an episode of Taskmaster he had seen back when he'd been Ben.

  Upon reaching a mark, he'd filled the area with his energy and used his Abilities to discreetly drag the mark back a few feet closer before heading to the next. Because he'd done it so gradually and had stopped his ploy when the marks were about a hundred feet away from the door, Gohnad was yet to catch on.

  It might not have seemed like much, but he'd effectively cut the distance he had to run between breaks by a third, making his rest stops more frequent and also lowering the amount of stamina he wasted between each. The last and most significant effect of his subterfuge was that in shortening the distance, as long as he sped up when passing in front of Gohnad, he could afford to slow down his pace and still return in the amount of time the man expected, thus not changing the rhythm he experienced and lulling him into a false pattern.

  "Stop! Something's not right."

  Gohnad stood up from his chair as Doro reached one of the marks and pivoted.

  "There, I knew it! You are turning back early!"

  Doro stopped on top of the mark and pointed down at his feet.

  "What are you on about? Look, I'm standing on it."

  Gohnad approached, his brow furrowing as he saw Doro was not lying. He kept walking another hundred feet and returned to the mark. Not having found another, he began inspecting the one at Doro's feet more closely, sticking the butt of his spear back into it to make sure it matched the girth.

  "Huh, strange. Guess I misjudged the distance."

  Gohnad walked back closer to the 150 feet where the mark had been initially and made a new mark before returning to Doro and stomping down on the previous one to flatten it out.

  "I'll go check the other one and fix it if it needs it."

  Damn. Well...He thinks it was his mistake, maybe I can just keep gaslighting him.

  "Oy, that is not very fair play. You are making it harder because I did better than you expected. Admit it!"

  "I'd stop talking if I were you, you'll need all the air you can get now that the real fun starts."

  As he'd promised, Gohnad fixed the other mark and went back to sit down at his spot.

  "Alright, since you got an extra break for free, you are skipping the next one. Go, go, go! Get those feet moving."

  Yup, definitely gonna keep gaslighting this dumbass.

  Although Doro was under more scrutiny this time, the small shifts were not noticeable enough for Gohnad to make them out from this distance. Five minutes later, Gohnad's attention started waning again, and Doro became more ambitious. To sell the con, each time Doro moved one of the fresh marks, he would also move the remaining traces of the old ones the same distance.

  ***

  "Stop! You are using the old marks, aren't you?"

  Doro stopped on the fresh mark that was now positioned a hundred feet away, right beneath his feet. Over the course of another hour, Doro had moved the marks back to the same, more manageable, distance as the previous time, but eventually, Gohnad had started paying closer attention and felt something was off again.

  "Seriously? Again? This is already so much tougher than before, stop messing with me!"

  Doro stomped on the ground to sell his fake frustration. For once, his attempts at deception felt genuine, mostly because he was getting annoyed by Gohnad's personality, so although the words were an act, the emotions he displayed were real.

  Gohnad stepped up to Doro, and the presence of a fresh mark had him scratching his head.

  "You are doing something! I know it. These marks moved!"

  "You are such a sore loser, old man! You were watching me, did I stop to touch the ground at any time? Look at these soft shoes; do they look like they could leave a groove like that in the ground? How would I even cover the previous marks so they couldn't be seen? Look! you can still see your old marks over there if you look closely."

  Gohnad had an incredulous look on his face, but as Doro refused to resume until he had checked, he gave in and walked away. When he came back, his expression was even more perplexed than the first time.

  "See? I told you. You aren't taking another break away from me for making me stop this time! It was entirely your fault. Can I keep going now or are you going to cheat and change the targets again?"

  Gohnad grumbled something under his breath before returning to his seat, and Doro decided to take that response as an instruction to proceed.

  That's it, as long as you can't prove I'm cheating, complaining will just make you look like a sore loser at best, and insane at worst. This still isn't fun, but at least I should be able to survive this modified course until lunch. I'll have to ask Mom if she has any of that muscle-relaxing tea left from when I was recovering; I will probably be sore tomorrow.

  ***

  "I guess this is passable. Still, had I known I was signing up to babysit a cheating pipsqueak, I wouldn't have taken the request. If that idiot Decanus hadn't messed with our last pay, I wouldn't have to take such low-ranking requests to make ends meet."

  Wait, that sounds familiar...Dhruvah?

  Doro sat in his chair, speedily eating his meal as though he wasn't involved in the conversation.

  "Cheatin'? My son? You caught him?"

  "Well, no. But I'm sure he did something. If he'd done the match properly, he'd be too tired to eat right now."

  Keep going; she doesn't care. Mom is the type of person to proudly say,"It's not cheatin' if you don't get caught.".

  "I ran between the marks you made; even when you changed your mind and made them further apart, I kept going. I don't know what else you could have wanted from me. I understand where you are coming from, though. A legionnaire with as much battle experience as yourself probably has better things to do than hang out with children. As an apology and bonus, why don't you let me clean up your plastron while you finish your meal? I'll even give it a polish and oil treatment."

  Khetep looked at his son with a puzzled expression, but Suyum had caught on to her son's mischievous purposes, having instilled them in him herself over the years.

  "Yeah, he did the full armor of a Decanus the other day. It was so clean that by the time it was he was done with it, it shone bright like the sun. Dhruvah was so happy he was speechless."

  Gohnad visibly flinched at the mention of the name, all but confirming Doro's suspicions. Upon seeing his wife act in such a civil manner toward such an impolite guest, Khetep seemed to understand that his son was aiming for some sort of payback and decided to give a helping hand.

  "Don't worry, I work with specialty metals and ceramics for a living, I've taught him how not to damage them and how to clean them properly."

  Gohnad gave Doro a superior smile as he grabbed his half-empty plate away from him.

  "If you want to be done by the end of lunch, let me help you out. Like this I'll spend more time eating, and you can start sooner. Also, I know Dhruvah, and that fool's opinion means nothing to me! You better not mess up."

  Gohnad poured the remnants of Doro's plate into his and tossed the plate back in front of Doro. The plate landed with a clang and spun in place for a few seconds before settling, leaving the room in an awkward silence.

  "Thank you for your generous gesture. Let me get right onto it."

  Doro gave Gohnad a too-wide smile as he responded to the slight through gritted teeth.

  Patience. I said I'd clean his plastron, but I never said I would do all of it. Now, I want to get some payback for Dhruvah and me! Time for the strongest shape!

  ***

  "Oh my! You outdid yourself! This is a magnificent motif. Do you have a coat-of-arms, Mister Gohnad? I was thinkin' my son's handiwork might be fit for you."

  Suyum didn't even attempt to hide her shit-eating grin as she admired the shape her son had artfully cleaned into the center of the plastron and then coated in in the same golden-colored alloy he had used on Dhruvah's armor.

  Upon the plastron's pectoral sections sat two large squiggly and saggy circular outlines, little wrinkle-like lines filling the shape and thinner, long, and scraggly ones coming out of their circumference. Beneath where the two circles met, a floppy and curved eggplant-like shape seemed to dangle, and the abdominal lines on the armor gave it a veiny look. The large size of the circles compared to the rather short and stunted shape below completed the picture Doro had in mind to perfection.

  You should be happy; I let you have a bit of dignity and left it uncut so you could cover your shame! Heh! That's what you get for being a prick.

  Gohnad's face contorted into a shape reminiscent of a Japanese Hanya mask as he looked down at his befouled chest.

  "You gonna pay for this you-"

  *BONK*

  Gohnad took one step toward Doro, but Suyum was ready with her energy-imbued mug in hand. She brought her arm back and swung it forward as fast as her muscular arms would allow her before releasing the mug. It flew straight into the center of Gohnad's distastefully decorated chest but instead of breaking, a loud sound rang out as it pushed the man back a step and bounced off unharmed.

  "You attacked me! I will rep-"

  Suyum picked up another mug and brandished it threateningly.

  "Wow, look, my son did such a good job the mug my wife threw didn't even leave a scratch. Now, that is quality service. It even came with a free quality check. I'd stick with that story if I were you. Unless you want us to report to the HQ that you threateningly advanced on a child with the intention of causing him harm, over a simple harmless prank. Now, here is your silver. Now that our accounts are paid, you are dismissed. I will escort my son today. There is no way I would entrust his safety to someone like you."

  Gohnad started looking back and forth between Suyum's mug and the door as if judging whether to push his luck or run for it. Khetep got tired of waiting and brandished a weapon of his own, a stoppered flask he'd grabbed from his belt pouch.

  "If my wife's mug doesn't scare you and convince you to cut your losses, this flask is filled with flesh-eating acid, and it will break on contact."

  Damn, why does no one else speak English? If Mom spoke English, she might have quite a reaction to Dad saying her 'mug' should scare grown men away.

  Khetep's last flourish seemed to do the trick, and Gohnad ran out the door, but not before grabbing a small sack of dried fruit sitting on the counter for his trouble.

  "You are crazy people! You better hope we don't cross paths again!"

  As Gohnad ran away with his tail between his legs, scared away by a child and two civilians, The trio laughed again as another part of Doro's prank was revealed.

  "What does that even mean? Hahaha!"

  Suyum laughed as she read the message cleaned into the back of Gohnad's. There, in large letters filling the majority of the space, a parting message was plainly visible in Modern Imperial.

  NOMEN

  SIGNIFICAT

  TESTICVLOS

  Ad Dhruvah - Ab Doro

  "Well, his name really does mean balls, at least in English."

  Khetep smacked his forehead and sighed.

  "Did you really have to sign it?"