(BL) Hunting The Field Guide

While it was openly known that the Guiding Centers all competed against each other for popularity and government subsidy, it wasn’t known publicly that there was bad blood between Guiding Center A and Guiding Center B. For the most part, Guiding Center C stayed it its own lane, and so did the other Guiding Centers, but Guiding Center A had it out for all the others. They were, in Kellen’s opinion, elitist, and he couldn’t understand why any Guide would want to work for them. But Kellen kept that opinion to himself, since his Father had worked there before meeting his Mother. That, and a lot of his friends from guiding school wanted to go there as well. Actually, it wasn’t a lot, all of them wanted to go there.

Kellen knew he’d always been unusual, since even back then he was determined to go to the front lines, but he still had no idea what drew people to that horrid place. Anything lower than B Class was treated like dirt, while B Class was treated as the average, and A Class was treated like the standard. It didn’t matter your Class, you were never treated like you were worth anything. Kellen hated those kinds of establishments the most. At least at Guiding Center C you knew you were selling your body, while at Guiding Center A you weren’t told you were selling your soul.

With all that being said, Guiding Center A had taken a strong dislike to Guiding Center B ever since they overtook them in the popularity vote. Kellen, and all of the other Guides who worked at Guiding Center B, knew they would never overtake them in the efficiency ranking, and in fact they often hovered around 3rd, or 4th place. When it came to the popularity vote?

Guiding Center B won without it being a close competition.

Turns out, people like it when you treat them well, not like shit.

Guiding Center A, a Center that never wanted to be less than, hated that. While Guiding Center B, threw a pizza party every time the results came out. They took it all in good fun, and were grateful that the Espers that visited them thought of Guiding Center B so highly. It also meant that Guiding Center A’s monopoly on the government money was no more, and it had been this way for a couple of years now.

So when Kellen finally spotted the group of Guiding Center A Guides, a wave of apprehension washed over him. He straightened up from where he had been bent over, sorting through a pile of canned food that might be salvageable to watch them approach.

He could tell that it was a blended group of Guides from their uniforms. Like the Guilds, all Guiding Centers had different uniforms. While Guiding Center B had gone the medical route, and preferred for their Guides to wear pale yellow nursing scrubs, Guiding Center A had modelled theirs after the former D.E.C.’s Guide uniforms. They had to wear black dress pants, and white dress shirts. What made them really stand out was the fact that they wore coloured vests that showed what Class of Guide you were speaking to. A Class were blue, B Class were green, C Class were yellow, D Class were pink, E Class were brown, and most insulting, F Class were white. You could barely tell that they worked at the Guiding Center.

Another quiet way to discriminate against certain Guides was the fact that some Guide’s had silver buttons, while others had gold. If you had gold buttons, you were more likely to get better Espers, while if you had silver buttons, you were likely to get the harder to deal with Espers. That wasn’t anything confirmed, but all Guides were gossips. Even if Guiding Center A stated that it wasn’t true, everyone knew they were just covering their asses.

So Kellen, recently contracted to the Saturn Guild, stood, staring at the clean Guides who approached. They were clearly coming from the direction of Guiding Center A, and even from the pile of rubble he was on he could pick out the several higher Class Guides with them. They also had a few C Class and D Class Guides, but for a group made up of about 15 people, only one or two of them were the lower Classes. Kellen had to hide how his face wanted to contort with disgust, so he turned to face the Captain. He wanted to know what he thought of the whole situation.

The Captain had a neutral expression on his face. He watched the group of Guides moving towards the search and rescue members. He finished what he was helping with before coming to stand closer to the group. Kellen watched him dust himself off as the Head of the group, the Manager of Guiding Center A, approached him.