brilliantstarhunter: Sending me on a new hunt. I'm still allowed to watch my picks as they go through Hell, I mean battle school, and I can observe my newest pick but

searchingthecosmos: They said move on; don't obsess. Told me that when I paid too much attention to one of my kids.

brilliantstarhunter: Yeah. I hope at least one of my picks will make it to command. One of mine is getting ready to get on a shuttle. Her thing's being taken out right now.

searchingthecosmos: Are you watching that, you sick freak? What are you, a lesbian and a masochist and a pedophile!

brilliantstarhunter: Ick, no. They didn't mess up my head that much. Besides, there's enough hiding place here to have fun with guys. I'm never going to get that desperate.

searchingthecosmos: They need to bring more girls up here. Sure, a boy majority is great for the girls up here cause you all have a great selection, but for us guys who don't have any girls to

brilliantstarhunter: Alright, I get it. Poor you. Hey, you using a sim right now?

searchingthecosmos: Nah. Not using one for another hour.

brilliantstarhunter: Me neither. Wanna go hang around the hallways like an Earth-side teen?

Searchingthecosmos: Let me finish up reading a kid's tests. I'll be in your hall in about 5 minutes.

"This won't hurt. Afterward, you might think something's missing but it will only be your monitor." The doctor smiled and stuck a needle into the monitor on the back of Nyx's neck. She gasped and blacked out for a second.

"God. Where am I?" she thought, looking around. She saw the doctor putting away the needle and remembered that she was in a doctor's office and they had taken out the monitor. "Oh yeah, I'm going to Battle School. Finally."

"Is she ready to go, or does she have to stay here for a bit?" A man. An I.F. man. A captain or something like that. Neal. That was his name.

"She seems to be okay, but just to be on the safe side she should be kept here for at least ten minutes," the doctor told Neal. "When does the shuttle leave?"

"At about 7. That's why I grabbed her before she had breakfast. The last time she ate was last night at 7. Convenient, no?"

"Convenient, how?" Nyx thought, drifting off to sleep for some reason.

"Why didn't you just not feed her today and put her on a shuttle tomorrow?"

"We've got things planned for her. We couldn't wait until tomorrow. It would…" That was the last she heard before completely fell asleep.

Twelve hours later, Nyx had had her nightgown taken away and had been given a one-piece uniform. It was baggy, but comfortable. If they were going to dress them like this all the time, it wouldn't be a problem.

"But," she thought as she boarded the shuttle. "I don't see any other girls. Maybe they chopped their hair off shorter than mine." They had cut her hair off and now it was chin length instead of shoulder. She eyed a few of the more feminine looking boys. No, they were definitely boys. Which meant that her launch group had no girls, something that would ostracize her from the rest of the group.

She sat down in a seat and stared at the wall of the shuttle, mad at Neal. She found the seat's buckle and strapped herself in.

"That jackass. He lied. Other girls in my launch group my ass." She thought, only half noticing that someone had taken the seat next to her.

"Hello. I'm Colin." Said the boy, clicking his buckle.

"Hi. I'm Nyx. Where-" she turned around and looked straight into his pink eyes. Her sentence died. Colin's white face broke into a grin; either he was very friendly or had been expecting her reaction.

"You're albino, right?"

"Yes. It's nice that you caught on so quickly. I expect everyone here will be bloody well able to tell. Unless they're all a load of prats." His odd vocabulary and extreme lack of color was too much for her on a very empty stomach.

"Prats?" she inquired politely.

"Ah, sorry. Shouldn't have expected to you know that. A prat is a gormless person. Oh bugger that; you won't get that either."

"The alien Buggers, right?"

Colin's smile faded and he covered his eyes with a white hand.

"Americans. You lot know so bloody little," he sighed, then brightened up, taking his hand off his eyes. "I know! I'll teach you how to talk like a proper Brit!" He started laughing. Nyx laughed too; it was contagious.

The takeoff was a bit rough. Nyx got bounced around against her seat the whole time. Finally, they escaped the Earth's atmosphere and suddenly the only thing holding her down was the seat belt. All sense of direction disappeared. A few kids gagged and looked like they would throw up if they had anything to hurl. Nyx smiled as she watched Colin's white hair float around. His hair was rather long compared to the other boys; in fact it was about as long as her hair. She wondered why they hadn't cut it short like the other boys'. Still. Null-g was fun. She had a feeling she had a halo of auburn hair around her head.

"Alright, kiddies," said Neal, climbing up into the shuttle. "I hope everyone's buckled in. The pilot doesn't want to clean your brains off of his shuttle. I doubt any of you were smart enough to figure out that you need to stay buckled in," Many clicks sounded throughout the area. "For those of you who seem to need written directions for simple activities, you won't be getting them anymore. I know all of your scores and I know exactly how smart you are, which for some of you isn't saying much."

Nyx rolled her eyes. Neal was an ass. Nothing he did would ever convince her otherwise. She hoped that when Kayla got sent up here, he wasn't the military person sent with her launch group.

Colin seemed like he was on the verge of cracking up again. Nyx hoped he wouldn't because then she would and it didn't seem like a good time to. Besides Neal might be a complete ass to Colin if he noticed. Colin was her first friend here, or she hoped he was, and she didn't want some idiotic military bum picking on him.

Neal spotted Colin and walked over.

"Oh no. Damn you Neal." She thought.

"What's so funny, Jenkins?" Colin tried to wipe the laughter off of his face, but too late. He looked like he was trying to decide what reply to give him.

"You, sir. You know perfectly well that all of us have above average intelligence and yet you're treating us like a bunch of prats. Some of us probably have higher IQs than you do." He must have gone with the smart-ass approach.

"Some of you, yes. But obviously not you. The girl next you has an IQ higher than me. That's right; a girl showed all of you up. I doubt that that'll change anytime soon." Nyx glared at him. The idiot. Trying to completely isolate her

"Oh thank you so much for doing this," she thought sarcastically. "Now I should have no friends."

"Oh wait, pardon me. There's one boy who managed to equal her scores, as unlikely as that seems. Mr. Thomas, could you please raise your hand so you can get the recognition you deserve?" A dark haired boy in the back raised his hand, a confused expression on his face. "These two will probably be in a nice, high up position in the I.F. while the rest of you are still in Command School, if you can make it there. And do humanity a favor and don't beat on the kid next to you. They might be the one to beat the Buggers, especially if you're sitting next to Mr. Thomas or our only girl. Have a fun flight, kiddies." He climbed back down to his seat.

And that's when the chaos started.

"Hey, girl, you think you're better than us? You think you're smarter?" said the boy sitting behind her. He kept poking her in the head, which was getting annoying. But she refused to answer him to tell him to stop it.

Suddenly Colin pinned the boy's arm against her seat. The boy yelped, but Colin hung on.

"Bloody idiot, she didn't ask for him to set her up like that. If you're mad that a girl's smarter than you, get used to it. My older brother says that girls are so smart that we try to treat them like scum to make ourselves feel intelligent."

"Oh yeah? Well your brother's wrong, ghost boy." The boy grabbed a handful of Colin's hair with his other hand and pulled. Colin yelled and dug his nails into the boy's hand.

"Call me 'ghost boy' again and I swear I'll beat your bloody brains out the instant I get off this thing." Colin growled.

"Stop it! What are you guys, four! Colin, let go of his hand and whoever you are, let go of his hair." Colin obliged, but the boy still held onto his hair.

"Listen, you prat, would you mind letting go of my hair? It's bloody annoying."

"Just because you listen to girls doesn't mean I do. What is she, your girlfriend?" The boy smiled maliciously.

"Well, she's a girl and she's my friend. I guess technically that would make her my girl friend."

"Look, you, if you're not going to let go of his hair, I'm going to have to hurt you." Nyx glared at him. The whole thing with Neal had driven her over the edge. She had been separated from Kayla, they hadn't fed her and she had a hunger headache, she still felt weird from them taking out her monitor, Neal had picked on her just to separate her from everyone else even more, and now this.

"Oh I'm just terrified. The little girl's gonna hurt me." He faked a shiver. Nyx blinked and grabbed a chunk of his skin between two of her nails. She dug into it as hard as she could.

"Let. Go. Now. I have a headache and don't feel like dealing with you." The boy let go of Colin's hair and Nyx released his skin.

"Oh good, he's bleeding," She thought happily. "Now maybe he'll leave me alone."

"God, you girls never fight clean." He scowled and disappeared behind the back of Nyx's chair.

Another boy's head appeared behind Colin's chair five minutes later. He looked exactly like the boy who had just been bothering them. Same black hair, same freckles, and same blue eyes. How odd. Obviously the same boy was trying to bother them again.

"I'm sorry about my brother." He said.

Both Colin and Nyx blinked.

"Brother? What brother?" asked Nyx.

"My brother, Erik. He was just bothering you. We're twins and somehow both of us managed to get in. We're identical in every way, except he's much more competitive than me. I'm Nathan, by the way. Sorry my brother's was being an ass." He actually looked sincere. Nyx and Colin told him their names. They talked about their families and how they had gotten in. They whistled when she said that she had two sisters.

"How do you have two? Is your younger sister an illegal Third?" asked Nathan.

"Nope. My mom was married before she met my dad. Paige is from that marriage. The government let my mom and dad have two children together, but they think it's only because Paige was so brilliant and then they started testing me too. They wanted as many brilliant kids as they could get. I think Makayla might join me up here in a year or two. Paige should be out of Command soon."

"Wow," breathed Colin. "Were your parents in the I.F.?"

"Nope. Just my half-sister and now me and Makayla." She stared at the wall.

"We're the brilliant girls who they want to do their 'dirty work', like all the kids here, as Paige put it in her last letter. She was not too happy that the I.F. wanted us. But… I think she's going to use Kayla and me eventually. Maybe it's not going to be as bad here as she said it was. She's so bitter. Mom said being in the military does different things to different people. I don't think I want it to do that to me too." She thought, as the shuttle landed. Still, it was nice to have made two friends, even if the twin of one of them was certainly going to be their enemy.