The last six candidates tried to laugh around firelight that night, but the empty places on the benches made their jokes and jibes fall flat. None of them knew when Auntie might call them into another round of testing. They could have as little as thirty minutes or as much as seven hours, but the certainty that she would come for them was both troublesome and comforting. Logically, they should all use the time to rest up, but instead, everyone elected to spend time together in the bright, moon-lit night. Even if the others had opted for their bunks, Kaname would have sat by the fire alone. Since Cielo had left, she played the Sims in her dreams.
"I have been thinking about how Auntie might get the better of me," Bear started the conversion. The whites of his eyes and teeth seemed to glow in contrast to his dark skin.
"Me, too," Dibs said with a shudder. His freckles danced in the firelight, but his eyes never wavered from the flames. "I keep thinking that she'll make me send people I know into suicide missions."
"Yeah, but even if she does, it's just a Sim," reasoned Del. She gathered her knees to her chest and rested her sharp chin on her crossed arms as if to comfort herself. "It's all make-believe."
"She got all of us with make-believe before. She could do it again," Aristo reflected. He undid his ponytail and ran his hands through his dark hair. "I'm so tired that it all feels a little too real."
"Ugh, I don't even want to think about it," Kaname groaned, but her weariness made her lie unconvincing, even to her own ears.
Sousuke tossed a handful of dried leaves into the flames, and the breeze lifted the burning fragments up like a flock of fireflies. "But anticipating the enemy's next move helps you counter it," he said evenly. "It's best to be prepared."
A figure stepped into the circle of firelight. The shadows covered her face, but the clipboard was a dead giveaway.
"So the key to success is preparation," Auntie drawled. "That's an interesting theory."
She looked from face to face around the circle of candidates as if challenging someone to counter her. Kaname did her best to set her features into a mask of indifference when Auntie's eyes swept across her. No one took the bait, and Auntie jotted down a note before walking away.
Del was the first on her feet to follow.
Auntie lead them across the island. They passed rows of darkened barracks and the silent mess hall. They walked right by Building D. No one was foolhardy enough to comment on the departure from their routine, but Kaname shared a nervous look with Dibs, who looked awfully pale given his ruddy complexion. Any surprise from Auntie couldn't be good.
Most of the denizens of Mithril's island base were sleeping, but Kaname noted a bowl of light above the tree-line ahead of them. Every few minutes, a helicopter would snap into focus after dropping its cloak and descend into the light accompanied by the oddly silenced whirl that Kaname recognized from her many rides in Mithril transports. The din of voices and rumble of engines grew in volume as they pushed through the undergrowth towards the light. By the time the broke into the clearing, the sound was deafening and the scene mayhem.
The helicopters swooped down to deposit wounded soldiers by the dozens. Medics and orderlies scrambled to organize the new arrivals into the triage system. The least wounded were being treated by a few medics, who were working to stem bleeding, check for head trauma, and administer pain killers. The second group received the most attention, and their pained cries carried over the din like the high note of a siren. The third group had only one assigned medic, who moved stiffly among the near-dead. Kaname watched her hesitate over a torn body, check vitals, and then signal for an orderly to haul away the corpse to join the ever-growing line of body bags on the far edge of the woods. Kaname had to tear her eyes away from where the pooled blood left his form outlined on the concrete.
Every light in the hospital to their right blazed, and from the number of wounded being treated right on the tarmac, it was obvious that the rooms inside could not accommodate the rush of the injured. To their left, a woman in blood-soaked fatigues engaged one of the pilots in a shouting match.
"Tell them to divert to a secondary location! We don't have the capacity to handle this kind of volume here!" she raged.
"And let these people die in the air?" the pilot yelled back.
"It's better to die on the ground?" she retorted. She swept a hand to the heart-rending, near-silent third group of wounded.
"So stop yelling at me and save them!" he shouted. The woman threw up her hands and stalked away to find someone else to hear her case. The pilot pulled off his flight helmet and ran a hand through his sweat-soaked hair. He knelt down and put a shaking hand on the head of a dead soldier. He turned his face away to the trees, and Kaname saw his shoulders jerk with a sob.
"Oh, god," she whispered.
Auntie turned around and surveyed her students.
"Who would like to tell these men that they should have been more prepared?" she inquired.
After making them watch the bloody aftermath of battle for another fifteen minutes, Auntie brought them back to Building D to run more Sims. As usual, they could drink as much coffee as they wanted, but the brew tasted bitter to Kaname. Perhaps it was the absence of Tia's sweet smile that made it so harsh. Kaname tossed it back anyway for the caffeine punch before she settled into her workstation. Since Nathan's departure, Auntie had stopped assigning partners. They each ran their own boards, so Kaname could not depend on a veteran soldier's help to guide her anymore.
"Expect changes," Auntie warned before the first Sim began, but the first board looked the same to Kaname. She took too long studying it, looking for the trick, and then had to race at the end to place the last of her forces. Right before she could hit the submit button, the screen glitched.
"Shit!" Dibs exclaimed at the same moment Kaname realized how utterly she was screwed.
The enemy's equipment had changed. Two AS units now showed as Lambda-driver equipped, and the tanks had upgraded as well. They had a full minute to readjust, but the enemy forces were already on the move. In other words, the battle had begun before they were ready.
Kaname's slow start turned out to be an advantage. She hadn't locked in her first plan prior to the change, but the others had to recall their orders before altering their strategy. In the end, they all got in passable plans but just barely.
The anger in the room was tangible, but Auntie stared them down.
"Last minute changes in intelligence. Incorrect preliminary data. Discrepancies between re-con reports and first responders on the ground. How can you prepare for faulty information?" she asked.
The candidates wisely didn't speak, but Sousuke's eyes went dead when Auntie's glare lingered on his face. Kaname didn't miss the flex of his jaw when everyone else had turned their attention back to the screens. Sousuke might be angry, but he hadn't broken despite Auntie's provocations.
The false dream of preparation was their hard lesson for the day.
In the next Sim, the scope of the view onscreen panned out to reveal additional enemy troops midway through the planning, so the battle had two offensive lines instead of the original one.
In the third, their own equipment failed to hit the chosen drop points, as if a strong wind had blown them all off-course, and the timer allowed only thirty seconds to cobble together a plan B.
In the fourth, the enemy started advancing from the first second of play, and they all wasted too much time waiting for a battle-changing glitch that never came.
The fifth was the worst. Even to Kaname, the Sim seemed a little too simple. The choices were so limited and the odds so impossible that the entire group submitted nearly identical battle plans.
Auntie paused before she ran the program to calculate their results.
"Would one of you kindly explain the reasoning behind this plan?" she queried.
Del stood up. "Ma'am, the best places to place forces are clearly-"
"I wasn't speaking about the specifics, Ms. Delgado," Auntie cut in. She lowered her reading glasses to pin poor Del under her icy gaze. "Why did you elect to enter this battle?"
Del blinked. "Ma'am?"
Auntie leaned forward and typed for a moment. Del's battle plan appeared on the projection screen, and Auntie used a laser pointer to highlight a new option at the bottom of the screen: Disengage.
"Your consolation can be that the others are just as unobservant," Auntie returned to her screen. "Let's see how you all fared."
Auntie clicked a button. Instead of the accustomed computerized version, the battle played out with real-life footage with a soundtrack of the actual radio transmissions. Kaname watched in horror as the battle ended in slaughter. Her plan- the common plan shared by everyone in the group- would have killed over forty people and wounded nearly a hundred others. She thought about the pilot with his hand on the head of his fallen friend, and the full gravity of what being in command really meant caused her stomach to flip-flop.
The footage ended in a silent room.
"Well, now you know what not to do," Aunt said drolly. "Let's continue."
Seven hours later, the candidates should have been thanking their lucky stars that no one had wiped out or quit, but everyone looked worn down and a little sick. Even though the previous ten days were damn hard, Auntie's games had followed certain rules. Kaname now realized that she had taken those rules for granted. She struggled to keep her indignation and frustration in check as she scrambled to relearn how to fight under the new and ever-shifting rules of engagement.
In addition to adding the option to refuse to fight, Auntie had introduced new features that let them request reinforcements or more information on the enemy. The trick (because, of course, there was a trick) was that both features sucked up a great deal of time but did not always yield better results. Kaname could request re-con and get vital new information or get nothing. She could ask for support, and the new troops might turn the tide of battle on her favor or it might cause the causality rate to skyrocket. The new options completely changed the way she had to think about approaching the battles, and it left her brain feeling like jelly.
Still, Kaname left Building D with a sense of pride, and that pride kept her from quitting. Despite Auntie's best efforts, she had endured, improved even. Her notorious stubbornness served her well against a known and brutal enemy. Even so, her strength had limits. When Dibs lost it on the way back to the barrack, Kaname had to look away to keep her own emotions from spilling out. She couldn't remember a time that she had felt so raw.
"Shit," Dibs mumbled as he wiped the tears away with his fists. "Sorry, guys. She got me good."
Del put an arm around his waist to hold him up, and even though he was nearly twice her size, Dibs leaned into her for support.
"What happened?" Del asked. Kaname heard the traces of a Spanish accent in the question and read it as a testament of the other woman's exhaustion.
Dibs shook his head and refused to answer.
Kaname tried to cheer them up. "But we all made it above the red line today, so that's something right?"
To her surprise, Del looked horrified, Aristo snickered, and Bear cleared his throat.
"What?" she asked.
Sousuke touched her elbow to get her attention while the Greek broke into a fit of bitter laughter.
"Kaname," he said in a low voice. "There's no more minimum score. Auntie set it to zero. Didn't you notice?"
"It's all mind games from here on out," Bear observed.
By the time they got back to barracks, the day was too hot for a mid-day campfire, so they tried to sleep instead. The bunks vacated by dropped candidates gaped between them like missing teeth. Kaname couldn't remember why she had wanted so much to stay, but the shape under the sheets in Sousuke's bunk reminded her why she had joined.
The next three days passed in a blur. Auntie stopped showing their scores; she only took time to highlight their mistakes. She referred it as "learning by non-example", but the group took to calling it "learning by humiliation" around the fire.
The rules changed and changed, and Auntie's tricks were beyond cruel. Kaname couldn't be sure what she did to the others, but Auntie targeted her more than once. She set a scenario that forced them to sacrifice the TTD-1. She introduced the challenge of civilian loss and then staged the next battle in Kaname's part of Tokyo. The first building razed by the enemy was Jindai High. Typically, Auntie's little jabs made her more mad than upset. They strengthened Kaname's resolve to endure. Kaname only lost it once, when her mother's face appeared in one of soldier dossiers. When she got back to the barracks, Kaname cried hard on the bathroom floor.
None of them wanted to give Auntie the pleasure of watching them break in the classroom, but the barracks was another story. They settled into the habit of looking away when someone needed a moment to lose it. Even Sousuke took off for a long walk alone once. On the last night, Aristo wept so fiercely after lights out that Del volunteered to take him outside so that the others could try to get sleep. It was a sweet gesture, especially given Aristo's less than respectful attitude towards the women in group, but it probably wasn't necessary. Kaname was still awake and dreading the blow-out, grueling, final battle that Auntie undoubtably had planned for them the next day when Aristo and Del crept in some hours later.
She must have fallen asleep at some point because she dreamed another unspeakable Sim dream. She actually loved Auntie a little for ending the nightmare early when she woke them up by flipping on the lights and poking her head into the room.
"You have one hour to get ready, pack, and meet me at Building A," she announced. "Donuts and coffee are outside."
The door banged shut behind her.
"C'mon guys," Del yawned from her bunk. "Our last meal is waiting."
"She could have at least brought us something with some meat in it," mumbled Dibs.
"Or grain alcohol," added Aristo.
Bear started to chuckle, and despite the exhaustion and wounded pride and growing sense of finality, the others joined in. Just hearing Bear's honest laugh made Kaname feel better.
She sat up and dangled her feet over the edge of the bunk.
"Hey guys, just in case I don't get the chance later, I just wanted to say thanks. I couldn't have made it without you," she confessed.
Dibs swatted at her ankles. "Knock it off, Chidori. It's too soon for teary good-byes."
"I agree," Bear said meaningfully. "I expect to see all of you in the firelight tonight."
Sousuke nodded. "I look forward to it."
"Gosh, now even Sagara's getting sentimental. You guys are such saps," Del complained, but she was grinning nevertheless. "C'mon Kaname, let's go and use up all of the hot water."
"Hope you didn't have your hearts set on getting anything with chocolate glaze," Dibs teased as he brought in the greasy box and large thermos that Auntie had left on the stoop.
"Hey, Aristo. I'm calling in that favor now," Del hollered over over her shoulder on her way to the washroom. "I want two. Lots of chocolate. Lots of sprinkles."
The Greek stood up and cracked his knuckles. "My pleasure," he agreed.
Kaname laughed again when she heard Dibs yell something about an unholy alliance as the hot shower poured over her head.
Until that moment, she had not understood how Sousuke could go through life without any family and only a few real friends. She had considered him freakishly immune to loneliness. She had pitied him and his sad, military existence. Back in Tokyo, she didn't know that strangers could become as close as family in fourteen days.
Kaname focused on the newly-minted happy memories of her comrades during the countless hours Auntie made her wait through in a drab, little cell in Building A. Auntie had divided the remaining candidates into single, tiny holding areas as soon as they arrived that morning, and without a watch in the windowless room, Kaname could only speculate how long she'd been kept waiting on the promise of a final one-on-one review with her instructor. Her stomach told her several hours had passed, but her mind argued that it couldn't be so long.
She regretted filled out the self- and peer-evaluation forms in such a hurry that morning. She could have taken her time; at least she might have staved off boredom for a few more minutes, but it had felt like another one of Auntie's tests. Kaname couldn't shake the feeling that someone was timing her responses. After she turned them in, she took a quick bathroom break and came back to her cell to wait. And wait. And wait. She waited so long that her butt went numb on the comfortless folding chair, and she had to alternate between sitting and pacing the meager ten foot length of the room. Who knew waiting could be so exhausting?
She was in the middle of counting ceiling tiles for the fourth time when the door finally opened.
"Ms. Chidori, I have been looking forward to speaking with you." Auntie's voice sounded higher and kinder than Kaname remembered. She watched warily from across the thin table as the formally-dressed officer opened a rather thick file and set out stacks of paper on the table.
"You can stop looking at me like I might bite," said Auntie with a smirk. "The tests are over, and I must say, you've made marked progress in just fourteen days."
She handled over a bradded folder, and Kaname noted her name written on the front cover.
"May I?" she asked, gesturing to the documents.
"By all means. These are about you, after all," Auntie returned. "You can see that every aspect of your performance in the past two weeks has been closely monitored and documented."
A cursory glance at the charts and spreadsheets made Kaname's eyes go wide. She expected the summaries of her overall causality counts, failed objectives, and her total mission success ratios. She didn't expect the breakdowns of her average number of cups of coffee per day and correlations between her downtime and performance. The report on her actual sleep vs. off-duty hours made her cringe. Was there a camera in the barracks?
Auntie let her pour through the data for a few minutes before continuing. "Let me summarize, Ms. Chidori. You have good reason to be proud. You came into the Academy with the least experience. We were persuaded to extend the initial invitation to you by Mithril's High Command against the better judgement of some of our advisors. Fortunately, you surpassed the original estimations of your abilities by leaps and bounds."
Kaname tried to hide her grin with the favorable report on her leadership at the challenging training course.
"So I hope that you are not too disappointed that we cannot extend a formal acceptance to you," Auntie went on. "It was overly optimistic of High Command to expect another Teletha Testarossa."
"What?" Kaname gasped.
Auntie patted her hand. "You did very well for a civilian. Indeed, you did far better than some of Mithril's own hopefuls, but you can't deny your obvious flaws."
Kaname's temper boiled, but she kept her voice even. "I don't know what you're talking about," she replied.
She caught her fingers twisting at the ends of her hair and set them firmly in her lap.
"Oh, Kaname, I was hoping that you wouldn't take it this hard," Auntie sighed. She plucked out a few sheets of paper and handed them over. "This is your progress chart. You can see that you have made more than a few big leaps in right direction during the past two weeks. These jumps in ability show promise, but when tracked against the remaining candidates, your performance is, well, lacking."
Kaname took in the wide gap between her lowly purple line and the jagged trails of the others. She imagined that red line skimming the top of the chart was Bear's.
"But the real issue came up in the peer reviews," Auntie droned, handing over a single sheet marked by highlighted passages. Kaname skimmed over the document.
More of a mascot than a contender...
Sweet girl, albeit inexperienced. Decent for a civilian...
Hard to imagine her winning the respect of a battalion...
Unreliable control over basic tactics...
Uncontrolled outbursts due to the Whispers...
Questionable relationship with Sagara...
Depends on the support of others...
Highly emotional, as should be expected from a teenaged girl...
As if to prove the last remark correct, Kaname wanted nothing more than to start throwing things.
Auntie read her impulse like a headline and pushed over a creamy envelope marked with an embossed seal.
"That's not to say that you aren't seen as a valuable asset to Mithril. The Research and Development group is chomping at the metaphorical bit to get you on contract," Auntie comforted. She stood up, then, and took her time smoothing down her skirt and adjusting her cap.
"I've taken the liberty of sending someone to pack up your things to save you the embarrassment of facing the others," she added like an afterthought. "Your bag is at the front desk. I urge you to consider the proposal from R&D. They will treat you well. The head researcher, Dr. Twomey, is expecting an answer tonight."
Auntie extended her hand. Kaname absently stood and took it. Auntie gave her a firm shake and a smile.
"Take care, Kaname," she said as the door closed behind her.
The blue-haired girl stared at the papers in front of her for a long moment. She opened the envelope and read the cordial greetings typed on the heavy-weight paper. She thought about how to break the news to Melissa and Kurz, about Tessa's face when she heard that Kaname couldn't hack it, about taking her file in its entirety outside and burning it. She was considering crying when the door creaked.
"Kaname? Can I come in?"
She hadn't thought about what to say to him. He opened the door anyway, slipped inside, and closed it gently behind him. She arranged her face into a half-smile.
"I don't think you are supposed here, Sousuke."
"Probably not, but I learned a long time ago that I should always find a way to say goodbye to you," he said.
Kaname wondered which of the peer-evalution comments that damned her with faint praise belonged to him.
"That's sweet, but it's okay," she lied. "It's not like we won't be seeing each other again."
The silence stretched between them. Kaname squirmed in the hard chair.
"I'm proud of you," Sousuke said at last.
Kaname felt the hot, angry tears threatening to spill out. She rested her forehead in the palms of her hands.
"I...I will miss you, Kaname. I really did look forward to being classmates again," Sousuke went on.
"Just go, Sousuke," she pleaded. The last thing she wanted was to let him see her cry over a simple rejection.
She heard him move to the door and pause.
"I'll tell Mao and Weber that you said hello," he said in a low voice. "Good-bye."
It took a second to process his meaning, and then Kaname jumped to her feet, knocking the flimsy chair with a jarring clatter.
"Wait! Where are you going?" she demanded.
"I've been assigned back to the TDD-1," he answered. His grey eyes searched hers for clues. "I'm supposed to check in tonight."
"That makes no sense," Kaname complained. A number of documents turned into a useless ball in her fist.
"My progress was unsatisfactory..." Sousuke began.
Kaname shoved the progress chart under his nose. "You all did great! Amazing even. I'm the weakest link."
Sousuke took the sheet of paper from her and traced the purple line that represented her growth.
"No, Kaname. You have more natural talent than any soldier I have ever known," he implored. "You learn so fast."
Kaname laughed bitterly. "Yeah, right."
Her reaction didn't sit right with him, and perhaps it was his directionless angry or his utter, bone-deep weariness that gave him courage to touch her cheek.
"You're one of the most capable people I have ever known," he told her.
She glared at him.
"You could have put that my review," she snorted.
"I did," he stated simply. "I really did."
She tipped her head into the warmth of his hand. "Then why was I reassigned to research?"
"Are you playing a joke on me?" Sousuke asked.
"No," she ground out, realization dawning on her. "Auntie's playing a trick on us."
They found Del, dry-eyed and shell-shocked, one door over.
"Neither of us got in. You?" Kaname asked.
"No," Del shook her head and frowned. Then, she put it together. "Oh, this is some fucking bullshit."
"Oh yeah," Kaname agreed.
"We need to find the others," Sousuke broke in.
Del took charge immediately. "Kaname, watch the front door. Sousuke, you and I need to find the guys before they do something stupid. Christ! I can't believe I almost fell for that 'nice-shot-but-no-cigar' crap."
Kaname made it to the building's single entrance just in time to intercept Dibs, who looked like someone had run over his kitten until she explained the situation to him. He responded by whooping and sweeping Kaname into a bone-crushing bear hug.
"You are the most wonderful girl, ever!" he crowed while the desk staff looked on and giggled.
When the others couldn't turn up Aristo or Bear in Building A, they grabbed their bags from the behind the desk, split up, and searched the island. Kaname tried the air hanger, Del went to the piers, and Sousuke scouted the mess hall. They had almost given up hope when Dibs found the Greek nursing his sore ego at the base cantina. Aristo gushed his thanks while drunkenly embracing all of them, except Del with whom he respectfully shook hands instead.
"I don't want to get my ass kicked," he explained as he extended his hand to her.
Del beamed at him. "Damn straight."
"So where is our Papa Bear?" Aristo hiccuped.
"He wasn't at any of the other locations. I don't know how we missed him," Sousuke wondered aloud. The sunset illuminated his cross-shaped scar but shed no light on their friend's whereabouts.
"The campfire won't be the same without him," Aristo slurred, and Del started to laugh.
"That sneak. No wonder none of us could ever beat him," she chuckled. "I should have realized when we didn't see his bag with the others. Guys, he's probably already back at the barracks."
Sure enough, a tall figure was keeping vigil over the flames when they finally made it home.
"Ha! I knew I would see you all again!" Bear beamed at them. "But I don't think your Auntie will be as glad. She owes me fifty bucks."
The Senegalian spread out his arms to welcome the perplexed candidates and flashed his sparkling white grin. "Congratulations and explanations are in order. Please sit."
They set down their bags against the barrack's foundation and took their familiar posts on the split-log benches. Everyone found their real files in their accustomed seats. Kaname breathed easier when she read the un-censored version of her peer-evaluations.
At first, I thought she would be more of a mascot than a contender, but I underestimated her...
Chidori's has shown that she can go from an unreliable control over basic tactics to owning advanced strategies in record time. Genius...
Her uncontrolled outbursts due to the Whispers are her only liability, but her many talents more than make up for that...
She may have a questionable relationship with Sagara, but the fact that a pro like him thinks so highly of her speaks volumes...
"I can't believe you've been Auntie's spy this whole time," Dibs grumbled, shaking his head. "How did I miss that."
"Some deception was necessary to truly sound out your potential," Bear explained. "And tomorrow, we can begin our true work. From now on, please call me Zio."