When civilians tell the story of my combat qualification, they talk about how a barely adult girl beat all twenty competitors, two soldiers per rank, leaving them in a twitching heap of broken bones without sweating one drop and while laughing the whole time. When other runners tell the story, I was stone-faced and unafraid, systematically rolling through my opponents with measured hits, careful not to disqualify myself by breaking their bones. Runners say I fought like a machine, like something inhumanly efficient. Both stories say I was fearless. Civilians are wrong about the laughing,
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