"So this goes here... Uncouple the power connectors first before... Arman? What are you doing? I said... Arman!"

A small white smoke puffed in front of Arman's repair table while Dara walked off to get another set of power connectors from the loading bay's hanging shelves; the test rifle's circuitry sizzled in the air while fragments of white sparks floated above the disassembled weapon.

"Arman Bruno, you idiot! You wasted a perfectly good battery. Well, alright, let's try again," sighed Dara Palilia, her patience waning thin.

She had been teaching basic Hydro-Rifle repair and maintenance to Arman who, with a bit of luck, had managed to grasp the concept of it all, though his was having trouble with connecting the main battery pack to the oscillating converter.

"Hey, look! No fire this time. That's a first," remarked Arman about his apparent progress.

"Yeah, yeah. Just make sure to attach the connectors properly this time," added Dara as she heads back to the repair table.

Once the power connectors were done and ready. Dara showed how the Amanium-powered Hydro-Rifle worked to Arman so he can better understand what it was that made the weapon work.

"So here you have the battery pack, which contains about an ounce of Amanium. It's connected to this chamber here, which super heats the salt water chamber here. Then the water is rapidly desalinated and converts the remaining crystallized salt into your ammo inside here. It's bit small, but you can see the long tube that propels the crystal towards the end of the barrel using the remaining steam from the heated saltwater. Well, that's basically it. Once you get that, it's easier to know where that parts are and how to reassemble them, you got it?"

Arman made a light-hearted salute to Dara. "Ma'am, yes, ma'am." He replied.

"Shut up!" Dara blushed slightly as they continued their lessons. The mechanical instructor had left the loading bay on some urgent matter and the platoon had been assigned to work on their weapons for inspection at the end of the day.

As Arman and Dara worked on their Hydro-Rifles, Marcus was fiddling around the instructor's clipboard, reviewing the class standings.

"Hey guys, look what we have here!" Marcus exclaimed, waving the clipboard around like a trophy.

"It says here that... Surprise, surprise! Arman's at the bottom of the class! Well, isn't that a shock!" Most of the platoon laughed along side Marcus, some were busy tinkering their rifles.

"Oh, and who's this at the top? Marcus Sakai? Well that's fairly obvious." He went and grabbed his finished Hydro-Rifle from his table and started tossing it around like a toy. He then grasped the rifle by its trigger and started spinning the light-weight weapon around.

"You see this masterpiece here? Finished it two minutes flat? Care to test it?" He then pointed the rifles sights at Arman, who was looking directly at him.

"Hey, man, stop that. Help me with this thing..." yelled Hugo from the back of the room who was having trouble with his repairs.

"Don't tell me what to do, Hugo," cried Marcus loudly so everyone could hear. His rifle still pointed at Arman. Marcus squinted one eye and aimed his sights on Arman's head.

"We could say it was an accident," Marcus whispered to his rifle. "The rifle accidentally misfired and killed a stray dog. No one would bat an eye. Right?"

Marcus looked around if there was any disagreement between the platoon. He saw but one. Dara confronted him and stood in front of his rifle's sight.

"Stop it! Stop that right now, Marcus! You're not suppose to play with that like it's some sort of toy. Put it down now," said Dara but Marcus continued to whisper his mischievous plan.

"Oh no, the rifle killed Arman accidentally and went through his body hitting Dara. It was horrible," mocked Marcus with a fake, crying voice.

"Hey, man. That's not funny. Put it down." Hugo stood up from behind his bench cautiously.

"What?!" shouted Marcus jokingly as he gritted his teeth behind the rifle's scope. "I wasn't going to do it. I was kidding! Stop making a fuss and get back to your sit."

"No, man. Just put down the rifle, okay?" Hugo insisted, slowly walking towards the seemingly unstable recruit.

The tension in the loading bay quarters felt like thick air suffocating the whole platoon. It was dead silent for a moment. So quiet in fact, that the platoon could almost hear their palpitating heartbeats marching across the room in perfect sync.

"Kidding!" Marcus shouted as he holstered his rifle between his arms. "Look at your ugly faces! Man, you really thought I was going to do it, didn't you? Ha-ha. You dumb lot, I wasn't going to do it."

Everyone in the room didn't get the joke Marcus just pulled. They all looked at Marcus, waiting for a punch line of some sort, because all of them suddenly felt uneasy with the arrogant recruit and his antics. For the rest of the platoon, it was fun messing around with the poor kid, but this one felt different, so they continued to lay their eyes on Marcus, in case he did do something as stupid as pulling the trigger.

"Alright, fine," Marcus yielded to the collective glare of the platoon as he tossed his weapon to his table.

When the rifle hit the table, everyone expected the weapon to either accidentally discharge, crack its Amanium battery and explode, or have its fluids leak and electrocute the table. But to their relief it none of it happened, immediately.

As soon the weapon clanged on top of the table, it started to intermittently jolt. Then its oscillators malfunctioned causing the Hydro-Rifle to bounce violently on top of the table while its battery pack slowly showed an dangerously increasing glow.

Arman, quick to respond to the situation, shouted, "Everyone down!" The entire platoon, along with Marcus, ducked below their tables as the rifle flailed on top of the table, blasting salinated projectiles all over the room; its sharpened crystal punctured most of the surrounding area around them.

The rifle had enough power to produce hundreds of crystal-like ammunition, and Arman had to do something before someone got badly hurt.

Arman thought it wasn't his place to do so. He wasn't a hero, nor was he capable of being as such. But his primal impulses triggered him to act nonetheless. Arman took one of the boxes beneath their tables, a disposing bin filled with proactive agent fluid sprays that was used to disable and permanently seal an Amanium battery in case it leaked. He took the lid of the bin and used it as a shield while holding the fluid spray in one hand.

In one swift motion, Arman took the spray and covered the rifle with the proactive fluid. As soon as the rifle stopped shooting, he took it, tossed it into of the empty metal containers and covered the lid, locking it tightly.

A low sounding 'boom' shuddered the floor. The Hydro-Rifle's battery had just exploded inside the container. Arman let out his held breath. They had avoided what was potentially a life-threatening situation. The recruits stood up slowly while their wary eyes examined the crystal-riddled room as Arman joined them. As soon as they realized the coast was clear, all of them started to gather at the center of the room. One by one they huddled together to check on each one of them, even Marcus.

"Look, it wasn't my fault! That Hydro-Rifle was defective to begin with!" defended Marcus, who was met with a barrage of loud, descriptive words that more or less had the meaning of 'idiot' in it along with a quick flurry of punches and kicks.

Dara interjected, "alright, enough! At least nobody got hurt. We could just tell the instructor that..."

They noticed a dark murky fluid running through the floor. Beneath their feet was a pool of blood spreading at the bottom of their boots.

One of them was bleeding.

One of the recruits was shot.

"Medic!" someone shouted. A handful of platoon members raced outside trying to look for any officer in charge that could help them as the rest helped carry the injured recruit to the Medical Bay.