A/N: A short little thing I wrote in Physics one day. I was thinking, we've had Ender's perspective on the Third Invasion, and we've had Bean's perspective. What would it have been like to just stand in the room, and listen to a battle as it went on? So this was born.
The Backroom
Twenty minutes into the battle, minds were breaking down in the backroom. Sounds of commands buzzing in others' headsets, now sounding through your own, now being spoken around you, played over the constant backdrop of buttons mashing, display lights humming, breaths coming fast and heavy. Every now and then, a soft curse. These sounds broke into the jeesh's consciousnesses and grounded them to reality. It was almost startling to realize that there was a world that mattered outside of the blips of light moving before them.
Twenty minutes into the battle. It seemed like it had been twenty minutes since the last battle, less than twenty minutes between that battle and the one before it, and ages and ages since they had actually slept. They were teetering on the brink of fatigue, and yet the battles just kept coming. The pressure was enough to drive one mad.
A new undercurrent of noise started up, soft clicking at first, then a deep breath and it became a crackling voice. Fly Molo was laughing.
"Fuck," he said, a semblance of amusement in his voice. "I've been cut off. I fucked things up, and he cut me off." He sounded flippant, as though a joke had just been played on him. Louder now: "I fucked it up, and he cut me off."
There was a squeak as Fly leaned back into his chair, shaking with hysteric laughter. Over this new addition to the background of noise, the battle went on.
