Lampshade adjusted his helmet, hoping for the day when his bucket would fit better. "Okay, so you all know what's at stake here. Our Citadel performance dictates our future, so let's do this right. You all know that Pragma is going to cover us and make sure no snipers get us from the tower. Sai and I will make a headrush in-"
"No, Lampshade, we have to observe the field at first; they're bound to have somewhere we can cover ourselves. Don't just rush in, especially not with Sai." Pragma said, absentmindedly touching xir hair.
"Are you doubting my ability?" Sai's voice crescendoed.
"Xi's not doubting you, Sai." Tide reassured, "It was so you can save the heavy firing for the part at the end."
"Which is funny because you're the heavy." Astu laughed, giving Tide a light punch to the arm.
"Back to the plan. Anyway, we bring in Tide to draw their fire, and then Sai and I go on the offensive. Astu and Pragma are going to cover us and Tide, making sure we get there safely. After that, I don't know much about the Citadel, so we're on our own." Lampshade butted in.
"It's fine Lampshade; we all know that you're good at improvising." Tide said.
"Remember, if the plan falls apart, Pragma's in charge, because Lampshade still needs a bit of help dealing with failure." Astu said.
"Astu!" Pragma hissed, but Lampshade dismissed xir with a wave.
"It's okay; he's right. Remember our sneakout?"
The squad snickered as they remembered when they had been caught about half a year ago looking for the most advanced training weapons by Ninety-nine. He hadn't turned them in to the Kaminoans, on the condition that they never did it again.
They stepped out onto the elevator up and looked at each other nervously. They were all good at fighting, and they'd done relatively well working as a team a long time ago, but there was a niggling fear that their old weaknesses would come back to haunt them.
Pragma grabbed Lampshade's hand and squeezed. He gave xir a grin. Personally, Lampshade was confident that his group could make it. He had made some growth, especially when he'd accepted the failure of the sneakout, gave his group credit, and didn't dominate the plans. He took his position at the front, leading the charge.
Pragma knew that Lampshade would do fine; after all, they had always been close and knew how to work with one another before the whole group had gotten their act together. Thankfully, Lampshade and the rest of the group listened to xir enough to know that if xi said to make any changes to Lampshade's plan, they would listen. Pragma felt doubt pushing at the back of xir mind, but xi pushed it away, warning the feelings to stay in their place, at least while the group was completing their final test.
Sai's confidence in Lampshade's leadership swung like a pendulum. Sometimes he thought he did well, and some other plans proved to be plain stupid. Mostly, he could carry a lot of the brute force on the team, so long as Tide was covering him on the heavy gun. He didn't want to be the leader, but he did need some clanker's heads to crush. He smiled at Tide, and he nodded his head at Sai. The plan had seemed okay, but he hoped that the leaders could cover their asses in the case of the plan failing. He stepped by Tide, knowing that he'd need the moral support.
Tide grinned and looked at his squad. He thought they had been ready for a long time, but he did admit that there were still a few kinks to be smoothed out. He thought of himself as the one to smooth out those rough patches. He knew he was no leader, but he was an okay heavy gunner, so he just pointed and fired where the others told him and tried to keep the rest of his ego-complex group to not murder each other during the rough times. He knew that today would be one of those days, but they were ready. He stepped to Lampshade's left, knowing that Pragma was Lampshade's right-hand man.
Astu figured that they might be headed for trouble; today was the one day that they needed to stick to the reg manual, and Lampshade wasn't too good at that. Normally he didn't mind a bit of rebellion, but when they were fighting for a grade, that was a different story. In addition to keeping his fearless leader on protocol, he also had Sai to worry about, who might deviate a little bit. He hoped to keep the group lighthearted as they were fighting; the group often took themselves far too seriously—he could even do that if he didn't crack a joke every once in a while. He stepped to Pragma's right, knowing that xi could dictate a breach in protocol or shut down a bad pun like no other.
As the elevator took the squad to the Citadel, they looked at each other nervously, but as they felt themselves getting closer, all they could look at was the gray door. They hissed open and another squad, the Leadership squad, walked past them.
"I get mixed vibes from those guys. You think they did okay, Lampshade?" Sai whispered.
"Look ahead, Sai; they might be giving us directions soon."
Sai nodded at Lampshade and they awaited the imminent fire from the droids. About thirty seconds later, it began. Lampshade gestured forward and the squad charged. After narrowly missing a blast from a sniper, Astu gestured toward the barricades and yelled to Pragma. Xi nodded and yelled for the group to find cover.
"Okay, see those snipers, Pragma? You get those. If anyone gets hit by one of those, he's a dead man. Sai, you, me, Tide, and Astu are going to try and take out all the main droids." Lampshade said.
"Also guys, watch each other's backs and keep an ear open, before we break up." Tide reminded, nudging Lampshade gently. Lampshade gave Tide a curt nod and the group ran back into chaos.
Pragma stayed behind the barricade, with Astu checking up on xir every few seconds. A relatively skilled marksman, it took xir a few tries, but by the time the rest of the squad had reached the middle of the room, xi had taken care of the pesky snipers.
As Pragma and Astu ran to join them, Tide was holding off the brunt of the droids, while Sai took daring, close-range shots to kill the stronger-caliber droids. Lampshade pressed on, even as the resistance from the droids increased with the distance to their goal. Eventually, Lampshade had pressed them too far and they were getting surrounded by battle droids.
"Oh shit oh shit oh shit we're not going to pass…" Lampshade started to go on.
Tide, recognizing what had happened before, firmly bumped his elbow against Lampshade's side. "Hold yourself together, man! We have to figure a way out of this, and we need your creative genius to pass."
Lampshade nodded and kept shooting, but was still visibly shaken.
"I know you'll hate me, but I've got a really dumb idea. Astu, you take the legs of that droid over there, and I take the ones over there. Then, we collapse them."
"If I've ever called an idea 'your most stupid' before, erase that, because this is inane!" Pragma yelled above the blaster fire.
"No offense, Pragma, but I got us into this shit, and it needs a bit of stupid right now. The rest of you, cover me and Astu, now go!"
The squad dove into action. Lampshade pulled the legs of a droid out from under it, and it fell to its left, knocking over two other droids, while Astu did the same thing about a meter away, allowing the other clones an escape route. They now held the advantage over the droids, backs to the wall, and outmatching them.
Tide looked at his squad and shook his head. "I'll hold them off. I know you overeager beavers want to break for the citadel. Just tell everyone I held the droids off for you, single-handed."
Sai, Pragma, and Lampshade broke for it, but Astu stayed by tide. "The reg manual says that I shouldn't leave a man behind. Besides, why should I let you have tall the glory?" he laughed. As Astu and Tide had a bit more fun than they were supposed to while killing the last few droids, the remaining three rappelled up the wall. After Astu and Tide finished with the droids, they climbed up with the group to celebrate as Lampshade, Pragma, and Sai were in a joking argument about who had touched the staff first.
"It doesn't matter, you dense nerf steaks; we still passed!" Astu said, running up to hug his squad. Tide joined, and they were about to collapse in a dogpile until an annoyed mentor's voice crackled over the intercom, telling them to get out so they could start the next round.
"You know, Lampshade, this is where the real battles begin. I don't even know why we're celebrating." Pragma whispered as they passed the next squad.
"You're right, but I don't see why we can't have our moment now." He squeezed Pragma's shoulder and they kept walking to await their new life.