“That is our plan,” Nick concluded, lowering his laser pointer to the ground.

A simulated classroom was where we were sitting, and I had nodded along with Nick’s explanation of our communication codes, planning and scheming that we had come up with together.

“Hell yeah!!” Screamed Torch, who sat up so quickly that her chair almost flew backwards, which would have tragically ended a lot of simulated chair lives.

“Wait wait wait wait,” Bardo complained, ever skeptical of our idea hurricanes. “We’re playing on an urban map, with four different buildings. What’s capturing the top going to accomplish for a tactical position? Can’t they just rush in and steal our flag?! We can’t shoot ‘em back from up top!”

Nick tilted his head up a smug ten degrees, and continued his field briefing. “It is true that none of us are equipped with sniper rifles. However, with the tops captured, we will have all the information we can have. That is why you and Vincent, both enforcers, will easily be able to improvise and defeat the others. There is no way around the center building, sector C.”

Bardo scratched his head.

“Ah, sure then. I’ll trust you and your insane plans.”

“Yeah!!” Torch screamed, her intensity still not dimmed. “Nick’s plans are the best! You really sound like a teacher!! You should be an officer!!”

“Since when were teachers cool-” Bardo started, but he was ignored by Nick.

“I thank you, Torch person.” Was what the humble mastermind replied. “Then it is now Vincent’s turn to provide a briefing.”

“Ah, yes,” I began. I stood up, opened up the virtual simulator interface, and placed my plans onto the classroom’s presentation board.

“As you know, we’re competing in the Academy’s first big series of 4v4 tournaments. Three matches every monday. It’ll be tough, but we’re out to win it. To win, we need to know our enemies. Luckily, the first few matches are all against classmates.”

Nick, walking past me, had given me his laser pointer, and I went to the next slide. There was the portrait of a tall, respectable blond girl wearing a bandana and an infectious smile. Her companion was an olive-skinned guy with short curly hair and an even worse smile.

“Asyxa and Erico “Lazeran.” I don’t know them personally. Any of you do?”

“Asyxa’s really nice,” Torch said. “And Erico is funny. I talk to them sometimes, but they both already have so many friends, it’s hard to find a place with them!”

“Hmmph,” Bardo stated. The obvious disgust was almost riveting to listen to. “They’re social butterflies. They just smile at everything and their problems magically disappear.”

“Well, they’re also class tops as Engineer and Recon. I’ve found in their files that they’re especially adept at setting traps. Since they’re both natural leaders, I assume the other two will follow their style in tactics.”

The slide went on. Next was the frowning face of one of our fifteen-year old classmates, with a sharp face and braided brown hair to supplement his warrior’s look. The other and last of our opponents was no less scary.

“I heard Jim has cybernetic arms!” Torch exclaimed. “He’s so scary. How are we going to beat Jim and… What was his name again?”

“Gendo Cloud,” I finished. “It is true that he is rather quiet and unnoteworthy in class. They’re breacher and assault classes, respectively. I think especially Jim is a threat. He seems pretty casual in class but his parents are from this honorable warrior culture. He had S-tier scores in hand-to-hand combat, and he fights with a Phalanx shield. I assume he and Gendo will prefer close-quarters combat, which is interesting since we prefer that in our style as well.”

“There’s one big difference,” Nick began, and we turned to him. He undermined my current position as teacher-sergeant!

“We have a heavy weapons operator and two enforcers, and they instead have a breacher and engineer. In our game an engineer is equipped with one aerial drone and one mini-tank. Their versatility is their strongest weapon, and with his enhancements Jim has a rather unfair advantage in one-on-ones. However, we have extremely high stopping power without needing an engineer’s preparation.”

Nick’s mind worked wonders as he spoke.

“We will take the towers, uncover the enemy’s offensive route, and crush them all in a single sweep. Staying together and making all-in attacks is going to be our game.”

“Sounds perfect, and just Bardo’s style, eh?”

“Charging in head-first? You got it. Heh.”

“Hell yeah!!”

 

“Hey there! Vincent, Nick, Bardo and Lenn. You ready for a good fight?”

Asyxa had a naturally bright voice. She happily greeted us in front of the scheduled simulator room’s entrance. Behind her, Erico and Jim seemed to be giving sulky Gendo some speech.

“Indeed,” Bardo started. He clumped his fists together. “May the best win.”

“Have fun!” Torch said. I myself just folded my arms and let my companions do the talking for me. Instead, I subtly listened in a bit on our opponent’s banter behind Asyxa.

“Hey man, pep up! Yo gotta fight ahead, just stick to yo plans,” Erico stated, followed up by Jim talking in the most laid-back voice witnessed in the past fifteen solar rotations.

“Do what you do best, man.”

“Hmmph.”

We entered the simulator room, dimly lit and ominous, and each of us entered our respective pod, placed in rows facing the other’s team. Sergeant Jeddle, her green eyes glaring at us, entered the room and checked on our status, and moments later the warp began.

This time, I managed to stand my ground when I warped into the world, but I would never grow accustomed to breaking and changing realities as casually.

“One minute before battle start,” the sergeant announced.

Our starting location this time was one of the four buildings. The windows and exit were blocked with an energy screen that would soon disappear. I checked my pockets and gear and mentally noted the locations of essentials.

Behind me, Bardo and Torch were throwing punches at each other sparring.

“Ten seconds,” the sergeant said. And soon, we were running across the field.

“I’m heading up tower… B-4? B-4!! See you all soon,” Torch stated on our comms, having already darted off rapidly climbing up one of the three-story buildings. Meanwhile, Bardo and I locked our shields together, and Nick followed behind us with the heavy plasma-emitter as his weapon of choice.

The map was small, but unlike the one we had fought Bardo and Torch in, it was elevated and full of obstacles in the form of buildings. We advanced across our pre-planned route, designed to minimize possibilities of flanking. If our enemy was in front of us, we were unstoppable.

We were determined to win this!

“A drone’s spotted me!” Torch exclaimed, and she opened fire with her AX-78 pulse rifle. We could see some of the blue streaks of energy course through the daylight sky. “Erico and Jim have split up towards uuuh… Point A-2 and A-5. They’re heading in all different directions at once, circling towards our flag! I’m gonna duck!”

“Acknowledged and thanks,” I replied, as our designated mission leader. “They understand we’ll beat them if we get into a big team fight. Let’s try cut one of them off, and then we capture their flag area. They’ll take our flag, but they can’t return it if we have the area secured.”

We abandoned our route and instead went towards point A-5, which was a road between two of the buildings. Jim raced past us and threw a pulsing grenade at us, the weapon of which a breacher had an infinite supply of. Nick and I ducked behind cover, but Bardo instead decided to rush straight past the grenade towards Jim.

“RAAAAAGH!!!”

He shield-bashed into Jim, who didn’t expect the charge at all, and crashed against the concrete walls of a building behind him with popped-open eyes. His ploy to rush past us was now only a false hope. Instead, he fought back. He activated his own Phalanx, and two mechanical, meter-long arms protruded from his cybernetically enhanced back. He was in full concentration as he assaulted Bardo with kicks, stabs and streaks, with a skill level indicating years of experience with his six appendages.

But still, the only thing that could save him here was support, for he would perish alone.

“Code: Sepultura,” Nick ominously stated. Bardo finally did his homework, and caught up on the message. He suddenly jerked sideways, and Nick’s blue flame incinerated an unprepared Jim. Thunder echoed across the buildings. I set a timer, knowing we had only two minutes until he respawned.

All while I remained on the lookout, jumped in front of Nick and absorbed the impact of a mini-tank that had just rounded the corner. Mini-tanks were only as tall as to my hips, but they packed enough power to punch craters through concrete.

“Tank flank. Seek cover.”

Nick repositioned his weapon and now pointed it towards the tank.

“Damn,” Bardo said whilst he repositioned his shield towards the enemy.

“You look real intimidating like that, dude. You gotta power it up!”

The tank drove backwards and out of sight again. What was our next step? 

“The blue flag has been grabbed!”

“Torch, what’s your status?”

“Heading to the center building now. Asyxa and Gendo are at their spawn and seem distracted. If you head there now you’ll be there before Erico returns with the flag! I think!”

Her speech was finicky and she seemed to be new to quick communication, but she had taken Nick’s lessons very seriously, and her intel was the key to our plan.

Bardo and I locked energy shields, and we ran out of the derelict structure with the sun reflecting on our nitreoneum-alloy weaponry. Nick reloaded a fuel canister of his deadly weapon on the run, and just seeing him carry the plasma-emitter had me feel the sheer weight of the thing.

It’s been a while since I last worked together with another enforcer. Though Bardo was a separate entity all of itself, our formation was impeccable as a forcefield.

And that force field would have received hits, if the enemy had a proper ambush set up. But they didn’t. I held up my hand in a circle, our team’s sign for caution, but nothing happened as we passed the last block that would take us to the enemy’s square.

“Have they left?” I inquired over the comms, and the reply was clear. “No! I mean, negative!”

Three, two, one.

“Power it up, Nick!”

“What do you mean?”

“You aren’t using how badass your voice can be, dude. Scream with me!”

We stormed the corner. It seems Asyxa and Gendo were in their starting building, distracted by an untimely conversation. 

“RAAAAGH!!” Bardo screamed, and halfway through, Nick joined in. I had no idea that his voice could sound so deep, so devastating, so utterly terrifying beyond what veteran warriors could do.

Bardo and I fired simultaneous acid buckshots from our D-9 shotguns at the surprised opposition. In two hits, Asyxa’s shields went down. Gendo fired a few rounds with a pistol, but our shields were impenetrable. 

“Fuck this. I’m not fighting.”

“Gendo! We can’t win if we-”

Gendo dropped his weapon.

In the span of seconds, they were both defeated, the armor-melting acid pacifying their nerve systems. Ironically, acid shotguns were one of the most humane weapons the Federation used, but in either case, simulations had a very low maximum pain limit.

In ten seconds, we had reloaded our weapons and set up a perimeter. Erico would have to come to us. Bardo was about to grab the red team’s flag, but Erico passed the center building’s corner and rushed towards us.

Not ample tactics for a recon, the soldier class armed with an anti-materiel railgun sniper rifle. As soon as he closed in, Nick and I tactically moved out of the building towards him. As Torch got the signal and appeared from the building behind him with her weapons loaded, it was over. Our first victory was an easy one, without losses, and we were sent back into reality.

A flash of light, and a deterioration of the sound around me, melting back together into the cold-lighted room in the Academy.

I opened my eyes, and was disoriented as always. I focused my mind on my companions instead, and then switched my mind’s current mode to celebration. Our fiery friend Lenn was first.

“We did it!! We did it!! Nick, your plans were perfect!”

“Well played, everyone.”

“Heh! That worked out pretty well.”

Bardo and Torch simultaneously offered Nick a high-five, a gesture he managed to return after only a two-second processing delay. Meanwhile, I had my attention focused on the opposition. I refused to believe they were as incompetent as they were, and knew our easy victory was partly secured by the disagreement Gendo and Asyxa seemed to have.

“Hey. Everything alright?”

“It’s fine,” Asyxa quickly spoke up. Erico raised a finger and opened his mouth, but a quick poke issued by Asyxa silenced him.

“Good luck on your next matches, Vincent. One day we’ll spar again, and I’ll win, hehe!”

She rallied her allies out, and though I appreciated her friendliness, my eyes only narrowed. They seemed to bicker with their voices down as they marched out. 

Meanwhile, Sergeant Jeddle had apparently already gone to another room, and we were now alone in this chamber with an hour of free time to spend.

“Hey, Vincent!!”

I gave Torch the high-five she deserved.

“So, how about we go get something to eat?”

“Let’s do some matches free-for-all after!”

“Hell yeah!”