[hider=How about some qualifiers?]
The sound of a body hitting the floor followed by a sharp whistle cut through the air. “And that’s the match! Final scores of the examination will be announced in an hour in the assembly hall.” the instructor said, dismissing the class.

Mikoto wiped the sweat off of her face. She won, but the SWAT guy gave her a run for her money in unarmed combat. Bending down to him, she offered a hand and pulled the bear faunus to his feet. “Good fight, Kage.” he grinned, making her smile and nod in response: “Quite so, lad. You fought precisely according to your training and that’s why you lost. I read the books too and I could tell what you were going to do half of the time.” the swan girl jabbed verbally. “Yeah, well, SWAT has operational protocols. You special operations guys can’t even tell us what you do much less how you work, if you even have guidelines.” he shrugged it off as they headed for the locker rooms, Mikoto responding only with the mock zip-the-lips gesture.

Finally it was over - the annual inter-department competition. To her though, it was much more - she was the first of her unit, and thus it was an unknown whether the two years of training she went through born any fruit at all. But the results seemed promising. Now, if only she won enough disciplines to be sent to the Vytal festival. She had a suspicion that she would be the one to go anyway, because it was the best testing ground they could get - however, her pride demanded that she earn it. 

Finally she and other cadets assembled in the main hall to listen to the headmaster announce the results. “It is to my great pleasure that all departments this year shown excellent performance. I see many promising talents here, and it fills me with hope that the people will be guarded by the best.” [i]What an amount of politically correct bovine excrements.[/i] Mikoto thought, shooting a sideways glance to some of the attending graduates. Most notably the traffic department had a disturbing percentage of the ‘coffee and donuts all day every day’ figures. [i]How can they even [b]fit[/b] into a patrol car?[/i]

“Now, as for the results:
Unarmed combat: First place Special Operations Command, second place Special Weapons And Tactics, third place Wall Guard.
Armed combat: SOC, SWAT, Wall Guard.
Grimm suppression: Wall Guard, SWAT, SOC.
Damage control: SWAT, Wall Guard, Traffic Department.
Citizen coordination: Traffic department, Wall Guard, SWAT.
Investigation and tracking: Homicide department, SOC, Traffic department.”

Mikoto’s eyes were twinkling. Naturally she won the combat exercises - it was what they made her for, fighting other people. But she didn’t do all that bad all and all, ranking on points in over half of the disciplines. Ah! The man was getting to the final scores!

“All in all, the results have been very close this year, the competition was of very high quality. Without further ado, the winner of the competition are Special Weapons and Tactics, with ten points, followed by Special Operations with nine, and Wall guard with eight.”

A happy ‘Yiss!’ escaped Mikoto’s mouth as she rose a celebratory fist. With only three guys from SWAT competing, that meant she had her spot secured!

[b][i]A few hours later...[/i][/b]
“On us - mostly me!” Mikoto grinned, raising her glass and emptying it. The older man in uniform across her frowned: “Yes, only mostly, you did come second after all.” Mikoto clutched her chest: “Ow, my heart! Why must you torture me so? My soul only longed for a word of praise to brighten my days!” she exasperated, reaching for the Sun with her other hand, before the police duo burst into laughing.

Commander Patrick Ryan, known to most as Ol’e Paddy has become her instructor and pretty much family. And ex-hunter who lost one of his legs defending a breach in the wall, his wound was too severe for him to teach new hunters, but the police academy snatched him right away to train the few with a semblance in their ranks, and now, he was ideal for attaching to the new unit. When she looked at it, his reason for coming to the academy was the same as hers - not good enough for Beacon. 

“But I did win in the fighting rounds, against SWAT who had THREE guys to my one woman, mind you.” she pointed out. Paddy raised an eyebrow: “If you failed even one combat round against people with barely developed aura defenses, I’d kick you out. You need to study up on your investigation! Hunters can be slippery bastards, it’s going to take up most of your time to find them, not to beat them. I’ll assign you some classes fromt the Homicide course… although, using your semblance to scare the answers from the suspect caused a lot of amusement in the surveillance booth.” he grinned.

Mikoto giggled, filling herself another shot from the rum bottle. “Aw, you say the nicest things, you old workhorse!” Their glasses rang and they emptied them. They have taken a day of leave to celebrate and draw up plans for the Vytal Festival, and oi, have they been celebrating for quite a while. The swan girl was starting to feel a bit tipsy, but today, she told herself she deserved it. And for her, that meant Rum. Paddy was true to his homeland and went with whisky.

The old man sighed, leaning back in his chair. “You did good. If you do this well in the tournament, I can retire happy.” he said. Mikoto was silent for a while, before getting up and walking around the table. She thrown her arms around the old man. “Don’t die on me gramps! I… I don’t have anyone else left.” Paddy chuckled: “Don’t worry, cygnet. These bones will creak for a while yet.”
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