Kill the animosity

                                    

                                          
“It appears you snowflakes are finally starting to toughen up! Those ‘peasants’ easily lapped you snails last week but it turns out you grew some legs after all. Gotta say, took you spoiled city brats long enough!”  
The drill instructor stood before his recruits, one half of the batch barely exhausted, the other still breathing a bit heavy. For some reason he kept stressing the word ‘peasant’ a lot throughout the last week when reviewing the results of their exercise. 
“You’re dismissed. I expect you at the training grounds at 15:00.”
“These cockroaches…if they weren’t busy crawling up their rice fields all their pathetic lives long, we’d be outrunning these filthy animals by a long shot.” The recruit with the big ears scoffed, throwing up his hands. He didn’t bother to keep his voice down one bit, similarly to Ieyasu in the canteen. Rather, he made sure everyone noticed.
Sayo failed to grab Ieyasu’s wrist on his march. The recruit’s buddy turned his head, pushing his comrade away as they walked.
“Sure, but that’s exactly why. They’re physically stronger, because they live a life different to ours. I think that’s a good thing though, because then we have something to strive towards.” He replied while staring back at Ieyasu and his friends. 
Sayo gave him a brief nod. ‘You idiot’ was one of the things that followed before the two disappeared into the barracks.
“Elephant ears ya dirt-eatin’ son of a bitch!” Ieyasu shouted through the entire training grounds.
“Calm down, will you?” Sayo grabbed him. “What were you going to do? Beat him up? In front of the drill instructor?” 
“Haven’t ya heard what that little shit just said?” He returned and pushed her off slowly. 
“It’s just noise. Like you said last week. Tatsumi?”
He was still staring after his ‘comrades’ marching off, fist trembling. “Filthy animals…cockroaches…”
“They’ll eat their words soon enough. Let. It. Go.” 
Deep sigh pushed out. Tatsumi turned away and walked with his two friends. 
“Hey!” A familiar, slightly squeaky voice shouted. 
“Ah, Momo! There ya are.” Ieyasu gave the boy a pat on the back but it turned out as a slight shove. 
“What was that about just now?” 
“Ah, don’t mind. Just them leeches from the capital runnin’ their foul mouths.” 
Momo quickly looked left. Then right. “Can you blame ‘em after the stuff you said about them in the canteen?” He spoke through a forced, toothy smirk as they casually strolled through the open yard. 
“This ain’t good. If this keeps up somebody's gonna get beaten up. Or worse.” Sayo pointed out.
“Bring it then! I’m gonna deal with ‘em all at once. I ain’t scared.”
“No, she’s right. We should all get along. We are comrades. I think we just need to get used to each other and before we know it we’ll all be friends.” 
Sayo just tilted her head, raising an eyebrow before she turned away. 
"That would be nice. Training's hard enough as is." Momo sighed. “At the end of the day we’re all in this together. We can’t be THAT different, can we?” 
“I ain’t got nothin’ in common with them scumbags.” Ieyasu sneered. “The only thing they got over us is the food we give them.” 
“You’re being unfair to them, bro. I think most of ‘em are good, normal people like us. Or Leone, remember? She showed us around and told us stuff about this whole city.” Tatsumi offered, walking with his hands behind his back. His cheekbones raised ever so slightly at the mention of her name.