It's the first day on the job for Steve and his guys, first day as slaves to Hardwicke Co. In Chapter 3, Steve signed them on for a week trial and maybe six months. Yesterday he and the guys had their tour and then their initiation by flogging. Steve wakes up to a surprise, then Luke gets his, and the new day and new job begin.
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Rebuilding a gladiator Chapter 4
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A Recon Marine learns to sleep - whenever you can, wherever you can. He learns situational awareness too - keep an eye and an ear open a bit, read you and the environment, don't get surprised.
Reading from inside out - My body tells me that it's not just Darren who's a big, strong guy, gladiator-trained, who needs to be worked physically hard. Me and my muscles feel great after the weekend (Chapter 2), best in years. Then there's my hide - every inch and everything that touches it remind me that over the last four days, I've gotten whipped more (fucked more too) than I did in four years and a half as a gladiator. Way more than losing a couple training bets with Darren (Chapter 1). I wanna spend one day not whipped. Not fucked either.
The chain collar's new, just since Friday, but it feels natural just now. Anyway, for 10 years I wore dogtags on a looser chain.
The testosterone in the air means I'm in a barracks. Except for combat and field training, I woke up in a barracks ever since I joined the Marines out of high school - 10 years Marines, almost five gladiators. Love that testosterone in the mornin', all the butch guys comin' alive. Even the guest room that we four shared at Jon and Ann's came alive - too bad they had to live with it. The place me and my guys rented in the slave estate didn't have the same intensity. Too many waiters and salesmen sleeping in, not enough rising studs like us.
I'm lyin' on my right side. A buff body spoons against me, right arm under me, right hand on my left tit, left arm over me, left hand on my right tit - this is no Marine barracks. But it feels good, especially after all the floggings.
But the stud with his dick in my hole is my slave Luke. 'Punk! Don't get no ideas.'
The left hand moves from my right tit to the back of my collar and jerks it. Luke growls, 'Whaddya mean, slave? You liked this Saturday (Chapter 2. Didn't but had to take it to get Darren rehabilitated.). 'N' I'm your lead hand today.' The right hand twists my left tit. The torso against my back and butt makes them soooo hot. The dick pumps faster. It shoots deep into me. My dick erupts. So do every nerve and muscle I own - my first full-body orgasm since that 'tantric' spa in Bang Cock on the combat break that the Corps called R&R (recreation and relaxation) but we knew was I&I (intercourse and intoxication).
Luke holds my balls and makes me lick my spunk. Then he rolls me over, plays balls n tits, sits on my resurrected dick. We shoot together. He feeds me his spunk.
Dude! This is so not me. I'm the Marine, the gladiator, the free man (okay, ex-con), the slave-owner. This sub pussyboy ain't me. No way. But just now it feels soooo kewl. I don't wanna move. But it's that time. It's gonna be a looong day.
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Luke won't know how to behave in a slave barracks. So I gotta orient him so we don't both get burned with no bullwhip.
'Don't bother puttin' on your shorts. Just hold 'em 'n' that towel. But we gotta square this cell away quick. Wipe everything downl.' But he holds my balls while I lick whatever was left, then while I square the bedding.
I try to help him. 'I don't know the drill here. But play it safe. Stand like this (parade rest, chin down, legs apart, shoulders and chest buff, arms behind your back, wrists above your butt). Speak only when spoken to. Say 'Sir.''
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The horn sounds. Our cell door opens and we stand in the hall beside it. Luke stands at parade rest, with his shorts. I hold my shorts and the towel. Okay so far.
Pete, our overseer, stops to face us. 'Y'all sleep okay?'
I answer, 'Sir! Yes, Sir! Thank you, Sir!'
Luke knows better. 'Yeah, Pete, thanks. So'd my fuck-bu ...'
Pete's quirt expertly bites both his tits and his central pecs. Luke swears. His tits get bit again. 'What do you call me, slave?'
I hope he remembers 'Sir.' He recovers. 'Sir! Yes, Sir! Thank you, Sir!' I relax.
Wrong. Pete's quirt bites my tits. 'Eh, boy, ain't you taught this slave no manners?'
No right answer. 'Sir! No Sir!.' Another bite.
' See y'all later.' He moves on. We're dismissed.
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The toilet and shower work like the gladiators'. Drop shorts and towel in the bins. Use facilities.
Shave. Trim body hair. I don't know if we have to but I tell the guys to stay safe, do it. Luke's learnin' to trim me. Buzz but not shave the head too. Look like Marines, like gladiators.
Apply deodorant - the sign says optional if you're just outdoors but a consequence if you forget. We apply.
Grab red shorts. Also the mandatory red jocks - new to us - one strap thong or conventional two-strap. Pete says two-strap for us. We feel the straps on our tawsed, caned, quirted butts.
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Then the other guys, the old hands. Last night's ugly intro did earn us some respect. Like the Man said, we showed we mean business. Lots of guys wanna talk to us. Okay, slap butt and back too. But they know we ain't no wimps, no targets for no chickenshit wannabe. Most seem pretty kewl.
I think we look in great shape. But these Hardwicke dudes show their HARD work. We'll have to work to catch up, even Luke 'n' Jamie, our construction dudes. The lead hands for me 'n' Darren.
Breakfast goes great - food's better'n gladiators, better'n what I could put on. And Mr Hardwicke pays for it all. Sit carefully on the hard bench. Meet more guys.
Pete tells us to wait in the training room off the slave entry. The guys open up on me. 'Dude! You nuts? These whip-happy bastards just because you want Mr Hardwicke's red truck? His whip? His dick? You're one dumb-ass master. ... '
Luke smirks. 'But a great fuck.'
'Okay, guys. Y'all're right.' I try to answer. 'That initiation was fuckin' rough. But we took it like real men. Like gladiators. Show pride. These buff worker dudes know we're here to work. And to learn. Together.'
'Why'd I do this? Yeah, we'll have our own truck - my first that's not Marine green. Way too many whip-happy dudes here, but they mostly play fair because they want workers, not targets. Yesterday I bullwhipped Mr H first, after I out-trained him in the gym, and then he ran bareback with me to show it. How's that worse than y'all's contractor?
'Ya gotta admit, this barracks is way cooler than our little warehouse corner. Better than the gladiator stables too. Better food. Better gym. Kewl guys to work, train, and play with.
'My contract keeps us together. It gives us a future that we didn't have on our own. Ain't NO future for unskilled labour, free or slave. Another hundred punks get enslaved every week. Remember how nobody wanted injured Darren? In a couple years, some younger dudes will replace y'all. Then what? I have to sell y'all to stay out of debt-slavery myself?
'Here, all y'all's wages go straight into my - our - bank account. Twice what I was savin' on our own. So when - if - we end this gig, we'll have money to invest in a future that lasts past the next recession that kills all the labour jobs. I won't have my Marine pension, and while I saved out of every Marine paycheque, all this cheap slave labour means that military salaries got real low. So much for 10 years savings. We have to be able to live after we're too old for labour jobs.
'Mr Hardwicke wants to train us up too, if we stay on after the six months. He won't throw us away, like the stables did Darren and Mike.'
I follow their eyes to Mr Hardwicke behind me. They remember to stand at parade rest.
'Steve's right,' he says. 'Damn straight I like to train with him, to whip him, to fuck him. Damn straight my staff like to hurt guys - I see y'all do too (Chapter 2) - but my staff don't hurt guys just for fun. As I told Steve, I want hardasses like y'all that do things the hard way, that compete to work harder. I have way too many guys that want easy outs, too few like you. I want your hardass attitudes. Just need to 'focus' them a bit. (He cracked his quirt on my tits. 'Sir! Thank you, Sir.')
'I invest in my assets. Men like you are my most important assets. Darren, Jamie, Luke - y'all need to finish high school. Most punks got enslaved before they did. We run their ignorant asses through the GED (general educational development) that means way more than some social-promotion diploma. My instructors 'encourage' them. I sell the dumb fucks.
'The guys that work with me can go anywhere in the organization. I own every man here, trained most of them, put them through apprenticeship or college. Encouraged them by hand all the way. All the professionals that don't have to be free men. You work with me, you have a future with me. The old guys you see mostly retired? They worked for my dad.
'But if you fuck up, I hurt you. Then I hurt Steve. You fuck up real bad, I enslave Steve for breach of contract. Then I sell his sorry ass and y'all's. He puts his ass on the line for y'all. For keeps. Make you, him, and me proud.
'Now here's Pete to get y'all on the road. Notice his collar.'
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'Good morning, men.'
'Sir! Good morning, Sir!'
First up, he takes us through the basic company orientation. History, what it is, what it does. Most important points? Know the rules. Follow the rules. Protect the assets. Mostly us. Wrong answers get the company speciality, the quirt across the pecs and tits. (We hold parade rest.)
He reviews Luke and Jamie on basic job-site procedures, then issues them their quirts. What can they hit and when? Big muscles. Back, butt, chest, thigh. Not arms. Not neck. Not head. Not crotch. Not waist. Not abs. Not kidneys. Not when the guy's makin' a move that he can't interrupt. Not when he's doin' it right. (Unlike a trainer's encouraging tawse.)
First they practise on the wall and a table. Then each other. Then me and Darren. They're good. They tuck the quirts into their jock and shorts waist-bands. I see it excites both their heads.
Pete leaves us to study the safety manual intro, sitting carefully at the table. We read, then review each other. He'll come back for the 10 am break to check us out.
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Quick washroom and mess-hall visits. They know how to feed a workin' man.
Classroom. First lesson. Pete asks, 'You're on a ladder. Your hammer drops. Nobody gets hit. Nothin' breaks. You have to climb down to get it. What's wrong?'
Jamie, our construction pro, gets tit-bit for saying, 'Sir, I lost the time to climb down and back up.' The answer's that that's just as bad as injuring an asset - a man or materiel.
Second lesson. I ask, 'Sir! May I ask a question?' I may. 'We call you, 'Sir.' What do Darren and me call Luke and Jamie?'
'They're your lead hands. Call 'em 'Sir.''
He reviews us on the intro. Not too many tit bites.
Review. 'What's the best way to be a floorshow, like y'all last night?'
Tit-bit wrong answers. The right one, 'Break a rule, Sir, that endangers a man or other property.'
He shows us our own boot shelves in the slave entry, issues our boots, and shows us the sock bins. We walk to our first job site, the warehouse and loading dock.
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'Show me how you put this box on the truck,' he says.
I straighten my back and tighten my core while I spread my feet, bend my knees, wrap arms around, straighten my knees, and step carefully onto the tailgate. 'Where, Sir? Beside the others at the front?'
'Right,' he says. I hold my core, straighten, reverse the lift, set the box down, work it into place. 'Right. Good job. What did you forget?'
'The loading list, Sir?'
One tit-bite. 'Right. Tick the box number off.'
'Now show me how you pick something from the warehouse and load it. This item. The list shows its location. Take a handtruck. Grab gloves for this - from the shelf by the door.' This one goes better. No titbite.
Darren, Jamie, and Luke work the same drill. We pass.
Quick forklift intro. Just a couple bites each as we try to learn how the controls respond. But we won't use it today, not without proper training.
Lunch break. Through the washroom first. Another good meal. Pete introduces us to some guys at a table. They think it's kewl that gladiators learn a real job. 'I saw some matches when I was free, but it's hard to relate to buff guys who just train and tan. That's why ticket sales dropped off so far your owner sent y'all out to work a real job.'
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We ride one of the classic red pickups to a construction site. The luxury of seatbelts. Luke gets back middle.
Sign in with the site super. Draw our hardhats and toolbelts. (Quirts go on toolbelt loop.) Ground training first. Pete walks us through the site, shows us what work gets done where, asks us the hazards, the things to watch for, how you do things. Checks us out on shovel, pick, wheelbarrow, hammer, crowbar, cutoff saw, skilsaw, drill, chisel ...
Next up, the nailgun. In a safe place against an earth berm, he has Jamie squeeze the trigger. 'This is the likeliest way to blind or kill a guy.' Luke and Jamie demonstrate proper use - hold or clamp the pieces together, hold the snout on the wood, squeeze one. Darren and I try. Just a couple bites.
Ladder safety. Place it well. Secure it or have a groundsman. Know your balance and how far you can lean or reach. Secure your tools and materials. Haul what you can't carry. Practise common moves - screw in a bracket, nail on trim, cut off a joist, scrape, paint. We pass.
Break. Visit clean portables, with hand-cleaner. A mess truck on site. They know how to feed a workin' man.
Scaffold safety. Climb. walk, reach, haul, work. Practise. Jamie and Luke say they never got this kind of orientation from their contractor. Pete says that's because unskilled punks come so cheap.
Trench and excavation safety. Climb in and out. Shore and check shoring. Don't work alone. Practise common moves. Set and remove forms.
Know the rules and how they apply.
We mostly pass. Check in the toolbelts and hardhats. Not many titbites. No floorshow tonight.
It feels good to get our carcasses into the truck again, even if the seats feel funny against our hides. Titbites seem to do less damage to work capacity than back or butt hits. Hardwicke Co makes sense.
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Back at the barracks, we clean and shelve our boots. Drop shorts. Hit showers. Deodorize. Clean shorts and jocks. Dinner. Meet more guys. Hear about their work.
Then the gym. Tonight the kinesiologist interviews us and introduces some trainers. All in collars, but they wear the only shirts. Pete and other overseers we recognize have lost their quirts and shirts.
He knows I worked as a trainer. 'Certified? All our trainers are' I have to answer, 'No, Sir. My gym didn't offer that.'
We have our physical evaluations. Tape measures on neck, arms, chest, waist, hips, thighs, calves. We pass the bodyfat percentage but will lower it some more. Match food intake to work output (or else). We do okay on the basic pushups, pullups, situps in 30 seconds and 60 seconds. Test aerobic capacity (VO2 max) on stationary bikes. Those 5k and 10k runs pay off for me and Darren, but the construction studs need to work their aerobic capacity. More tests. Darren and I need to work upper-body anaerobic capacity. We all need flexibility.
He tells the trainers our programs and our goals for the month. They take us through them. They and their tawses encourage us. The work day continues here. We'll outtrain the gladiators. I look forward to it.
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Another quick shower, clean shorts, jocks optional. Then the lounge for a beer and a healthy snack. No floor show tonight.
I wonder how it will go tonight. Luke spoons me.