Author Talk: Hit a bit of a rough patch. Will be back to uploading new chapters for this fic. Haven't forgotten about it.
Disclaimer: The following is a fan-based parody. She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is owned and created by Noelle Stevenson and the DreamWorks Animation Television Team, and licensed by Netflix. Please support the official release.
There are only three things that are important in the Fright Zone: Punctuality, Efficiency, and Obedience. It's a pity that Ping was only able to be two of those three things at once.
As he walked down the winding hallway after class, Kyle approached him, with an expression that curiously bordered on nervousness and trepidation. His eyes were haggard and bleary, his shirt was rumpled and unwashed with a few food stains that have since dried off. His already-wild hair looked, If at all possible, even more untamed. "Uh, Ping, have you been to the meeting yet? I'm sorry if this question was sort of dumb, but I thought that just in case you missed it you should hear it from me first."
"Hm? Oh, you mean the one with the veteran officer? Well, I mean, yeah. Of course I did." Ping waved his hand absent-mindedly, he was thinking about more important things at that moment.
"No, that's not the letting I was talking about. It's the meeting with Force Captain Octavia?" Kyle said, confused. His lower lip trembled for a bit before turning his head to the side.
Ping stopped dead in his tracks and focused his full attention on Kyle. "What meeting?"
"You know, the one where you deliver her a progress update on how's things are going?" Kyle trailed off, an unreadable emotion flittered over his face.
"What?" Ping's face fell, he placed his hands onto Kyle's shoulders, and stared at him with an intense glare, "When's this happening? Maybe I could still make it."
"...it's yesterday."
"Dammit Kyle! It's not even lunch yet and I already have a headache!" Ping rubbed his temples, he wasn't certain why this was happening now, of all times. "Where's my calendar?"
"Oh. It's scrapped. The War Office wanted to synchronise everyone's schedules...for efficiency and so it's all digitised now. But someone accidentally set up the logs wrong and now no one can access it. And, uh, by someone I mean me." Kyle said sheepishly, "Sorry."
"..." Ping sighed, it is going to be a long day, isn't it? "So, can you reschedule the meeting?"
"Oh, I already did." There was an expression of pride on Kyle's face that Ping felt was somewhat unearned. "Just in case you didn't go, I scheduled a follow-up meeting for you so that you could, you know...not get rostered onto toilet duty. Forever."
"Thank you. When is the meeting?"
"Oh," Kyle looked taken aback as he turned to rush off towards the nearest monitor. "Hold on I'll check."
"KYLE! You were the one who booked the meeting. And which room is it?" Ping yelled down the hallway, attracting a few strange glances.
"CHECKING!" Kyle yelled back. He typed in what to Ping was a string of incomprehensible gibberish before the monitor spat out a more comprehensible result
Meeting: Junior Cadet Ping (Assigned Duty: Office of Veterans' Benefits and Civil Infrastructure) in R543 at 13:40 w/ Force Captain Octavia
Ping blinked.
"Kyle, is this saying what I think it's saying?" Ping looked pale, almost sickly under the glow of the green light coming from the monitor. "You said this is a simple progress report, right?"
"Oh yeah, is there anything wrong?" Kyle looked confused, as though he couldn't understand what's so wrong about the meeting times."
"It's in two hours." Ping shook his head. "Okay. What does this leave me with for the progress reports? Nothing. I won't have any time to write a dang report, Kyle. I'm going to need to skip lunch and hole up in 'the room'."
"...you know what, maybe next time I'll ask you when you want the appointment booked." Kyle looked up, his eyes innocently blank like two discs of light. "Do you want me to circulate your comments to everyone else on the team?"
"Please don't."
"Got it." Kyle nodded, and silently retreated from.
Ping sighed, and changed course towards the office room in preparation for a long day ahead. "Of all the times for them to upgrade the calendar. It gotta be now? Gee I wonder what's next, a swimming pool? Actually, that doesn't sound like a bad idea—wait, why am I think about this? Back to the corruption, yes, the corruption."
There was something off about the 3rd Engineerig Regiment. Though Ping couldn't quite put his finger on what. He knew for a fact that the War Office has been underfunding the Office of Veterans' Benefitd and Civil Infrastructure purportedly due to mismanagement, if previous years' reports have been indicative of anything. Ping suspects there's something deeper going on.
As he opened his office door, he slipped, and the ground rushed up to meet him. Cursing with the rudest words within his vocabulary, he examined the offending object that caused him slip: a pile of paper that slipped off from the desk. More applications. The difference for this batch was the large red letter stuck beneath each brown paper folder reading 'URGENT: PROCESS BEFORE MIDNIGHT'
Ping groaned. He didn't have the time for this, everyone else is still eating lunch, and he has a progress report to prepare. Before he could procrastinate further, he picked a document at random from the pile.
"...In compliance with the procedures outlined in Section 3 of the Horde Building Act, the 3rd Engineering Regiment wish to apply for the active protection and maintenance of a new Housing project..."
Ping furrowed his eyebrows, tossed the document on his desk and started reading the next one.
"...In compliance with the procedures outlined in Section 5 of the Horde Building Act, the 3rd Engineering Regiment wish to apply for—"
Ping stopped reading. Onward to the next application form.
"The 3rd Engineering Regiment wish to apply for—"
Ping furrowed his brows in annoyance. Just how many of those applications are there? He skimmed the entire stack from top to bottom and groaned. The 3rd Engineering Regiment has submitted twenty applications. Ping has no idea whether this was par for course or something abnormal was going on, but there was something disturbing about the fact that, almost form day one, there seems to be issues at hand larger than he could grapple with.
He searched up the database, hoping that there would be some paper trail for their previous projects. There's two roadworks project that they were ostensibly in charge of. Yet whoever was in charge of recording documentations before Force Captain Octavia saddled him with the job had somehow omitted filing any form of paperwork for previous applications. Ping scribbled down the details on a notepad, walked out the door and shouted, "LONNIE!"
"Coming." A voice echoed down from the far end of the hallway. "What is it?"
"Can you grab a helmet and go look up two roadworks projects for me? It's nothing much, but do you mind clearing your schedule after three to go take some photos of the site?" Ping bellowed down, he glared at the person tittering at the corner disapprovingly. "AND THIS IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS!"
"Hey mon, keep your voice down, cool? Some of us need to chill after a morning of work." The person looked back, unimpressed. Then he sashayed away as he flicked his dreadlocks at Ping's direction.
"Did you get that, Lonnie?" Ping said, after Lonnie appeared within sight. She looked out of breath and was carting a tray of paperwork, if Ping wasn't already confident that they weren't for him, he probably would've suffered a heart attack right there and then.
"Yeah. Okay. I'll see what I can do. See you in combat sims." Lonnie looked unhappy, but snatched the notepad to examine the details nevertheless. "It's slightly out of the Fright Zone's walls, I'll need a permit, can't get out without some form of permission, remember?"
"Don't worry about it. I'll get it done for you." A trave of impatience crept into Ping's voice. "Alright. Good luck with your duties."
"You too."
Having taken care of that, he went on to crafting a progress report. He slumped down into the bare wooden chair in defeat as he stared blankly at the writing tools in front of him, having not the foggiest as to where to start.
"Oh dear, this is going to be problematic." He murmured to himself.