To those who have left reviews for me: Thank you so much! I'm so happy that people like this story. :Hugs the nice people who left reviews: Anyway, I wish more people would leave reviews. I like getting reviews. Even if all you want to do is give constructive criticism, please leave a review. I even read the anonymous ones.

Thank you to teh editors (that sounds so professional): Goldeye, Maris, and my boyfriend. You lot rock sometimes. This is one of them. But don't let it go to your heads, okay?

Oh yeah, just so you people know, almost all of the characters are my invention. I love them all. Even the enemies I made for Nyx. Meef. I feel a bit guilty. But hey, what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. I always seem to put my characters in bad situations, though. But they're tough so they'll survive. Especially Makayla. Things will be interesting when she goes up in space. But that's all I'll say about that right now. Hehehe.

"She's the only girl in her launch group. And you still told them to use the separation technique? Was that really necessary?"

"Maybe. It wasn't my decision entirely, anyway."

"Maybe? Maybe? Is that all you can say about this! If you really wanted to isolate her, you should have taken her up here without any other kids! She's going to have a hard enough time surviving in the military world. You know perfectly well that even though the I.F. says they're not sexist, they still don't make women commanders, no matter how brilliant they are."

"You know why that happens."

"No crap. Neither me nor the other four girls from our launch have gotten a command position. I feel so unchallenged."

"Oh shut up. You're just still mad that even though you're one of the best students here, they never gave you an army at Battle School and they didn't graduate you early with the best, which I admit they should have."

"What do you have, air in your head? This isn't about me."

"Yes it is. You see every act of sexism as personal insult."

'The Girl'. She was really starting to dislike that title. It had gotten old really fast over the two weeks she had been here. It wasn't her fault that she had been the only girl in her launch group. If she had been able to pick which group she had gone up with, there would have been other girls. She had been furious that he had purposely made the other Launchies hate her. They knew that she was the only girl and would be isolated anyway. The boy with the highest scores, poor bastard, was a brilliant strategist and had a brilliant mind, but wasn't too good at psychology so he had had no idea why they were doing that to him. It didn't matter anyway; the whole separation thing hadn't worked with him and would never work with him because his personality naturally drew people to him. She, however, was not like that. Out of about twenty children in her launch, she was still friends with just Nathan and Colin. She knew more about everyone than they thought she did. She sat and watched everyone when they weren't paying attention. For example, there was Pascal. Great soldier and pretty intelligent, but not a good tactician. If she got to be a toon leader later, which she was starting to doubt that would happen, and he was in her toon, she'd know exactly how to use him. And then there was Mick. He was so good at physics and astrophysics, but his aim was horrible. Someone needed to teach him to shoot properly. And yet in the Battle Room, he was picked faster than she was. And her shot was much, much better. It isn't fair, she thought, knowing she sounded like a whiney brat. She fiddled with her food, not really interested in eating.

Even more frustrating was that she hadn't seen another girl here. Though she used the bathroom that all the girls, no matter how old they were or how inconvenient it was to walk to it, used, she hadn't seen any one else use it. She was starting to think that the girls here had all graduated. Although, she had seen one older kid in the hall who looked like he could be a girl. But there was a mark on his uniform that she knew meant that he was a commander and she was so cynical that she had immediately decided that he had to be a boy.

A boy who looked about eight put their tray on her table. She looked up at him.

"It's okay if I sit here, neh?" He said. Before she could even say, "I guess", he sat down, chin length black hair swinging in front of his face.

"You do know that I'm the only girl, which is why no one's sitting with me." She pointed out. Might as well get that out of the way. It was a half lie; if Colin and Nathan weren't taking their showers currently they'd be sitting with her. But nobody else would.

"See, that's the problem with keeping you Launchies away from the rest of us; you get these silly ideas." He put a forkful of whatever was for dinner in his mouth and gazed at her with green eyes that slanted at the corners.

"So you be saying that there are other girls? I've never seen any others in the bathroom." She said.

"Yeah, there are other girls. There's about a dozen or maybe two dozen, but some of the better-known ones are Petra, who's almost twelve, Wu, or Woo, who's in Dragon, and me. Cornelia Ai. We're just not in the bathroom very often." She grinned.

"Wait you're a girl?" Nyx's brown eyes got huge with shock.

"Yeah. They make us keep our damn hair as short as the boys so we can't get injured by some ass wrapping our nice, long braids around something in the Battle Room. And it also makes us look like all the idiots here." Cornelia stabbed something on her plate.

"Oh. So that's why your hair be only chin length?"

"You thought you be the only girl with hair that short, Launchie?" Cornelia grinned. She wasn't using Launchie as an insult.

"I thought I be the only girl not graduated. I guess I was wrong."

"You most certainly were. We haven't all graduated yet," She paused for a few seconds so she could eat some more of her dinner. "Where did you come from?"

"The U.S."

"Screwed up area. My dad was a diplomat to Japan, where he met my mom. They fell in love and he refused to leave Japan. So that's where my brother and I were born. What are you best at?"

Nyx looked confused. Was she talking about the Battle Room or in general?

"I mean what tests did you score highest on?"

"Oh. I had the highest scores on all the psychology tests. And second highest on most of the intelligence ones. There was a boy who had the highest scores on all the intelligence tests and I'm guessing he did pretty well on the command parts of the tests because even though Neal singled out him and me, he be friends with all the launchies." She filled Cornelia in on what had happened on the shuttle.

"Asses. But yeah, that kid definitely got high scores on the command bits. What about you?"

"I dunno. I might have. I know how I would use every single launchy but I don't think I would ever get the opportunity to command. I'm a girl."

"If you really be good at command, they'll make you a commander, whether they want to or not. Petra used to be the scum and scapegoat of Salamander, but now she's got her own army. The girl's brilliant. If you're like that, they'll give you an army."

"What about you? What makes you so well known?"

Cornelia laughed and took another bite of her food. When she was done chewing she said, "Well, I'm one of the few girls here. That automatically makes me infamous. I've got the most accurate shot in my army, Ferret, but sometimes that isn't saying much. My standings aren't as high as they used to be; after Dragon army was recreated, the highest I've been on the damn rankings is thirtieth. The first seventeen slots are filled by members of Dragon."

"Santa merda. They really are good." Nyx said. It was one of the first phrases in Portuguese she had learned here. Holy shit. All the kids here had such lovely vocabularies. And nobody used correct grammar. She had gotten used to being lazy about her language fast.

"Santa merda is right. None of them had been good before Ender got them. He's famous here. But don't expect to meet him; he's so smart they'll probably graduate him soon," she gazed into space a bit, then came back to reality. "Do me a favor. There aren't enough girls here in command positions. Maybe eventually I'll get one; I'm a better commander than some of the idiots who are in charge here. I don't know. But you better beat those shit for brains in your launch group in everything. Prove to them girls are just as good soldiers and commanders as boys. I'm not worried about you needing to prove you're smarter; everyone knows girls are smarter. I'll help you out if you need it. Comprende?" She stared hard at Nyx.

"Je comprends." Nyx's aunt had taught her that bit of French for no real reason.

"Good. You got Battle Room practice tomorrow?"

"Yeah."

"You busy during free time?"

"No. I don't like the games on my laptop."

"Okay. I'm gonna teach you how to be the best fighter in your group starting tomorrow. Ender doesn't hold practices anymore or else I'd send you to learn from him. Oh well. Your homework tonight is read up on military strategy. Got it?"

"Yeah." She liked Cornelia. She couldn't help it. She was like another older sister or something. Just not nearly as cynical.

"See you tomorrow. I've got school work to do and games to play." Cornelia stood up and took her tray over to the trash, even though there was still a bit of food on her tray. The nutritionist's voice said, "The amount of food you are given is based on your dietary needs and-"

"Oh shut up." She flicked off the nutritionist. "You give me too much food and have been giving me too much ever since I got here."

Nyx gaped. While she swore as much as the other kids here and made plenty of rude gestures at people, she never flicked off adults. Impressive. And a bit insubordinate. But they did give way too much food. She couldn't blame Cornelia.

"What books should I start with?" She thought. "I could start from the earliest and go to the latest. I wonder if you can play chess on your desk. That would be very helpful. I'll get Colin and Nathan to study with me. If I can tear them away from the Fantasy Game. Telling them that it's so the adults can analyze our minds didn't work, even though it's true." She rolled her eyes. She played it only so they didn't go crazy because she wasn't playing it. But she didn't trust them. They had already proven themselves to be liars. Besides, it bored her.

But now she was up to three friends. Things were looking up. She stood up and dumped her tray into the trash, ignoring the nutritionist. Nyx dashed out of the cafeteria to find Nathan and Colin. In the hallway she almost crashed into the two of them going to dinner after their showers.

"Guess what? I met another girl. And she's going to teach me stuff," she said excitedly. "I'm going to learn how to fight in the Battle Room from her tomorrow during free time. She wanted to send me to Ender's practice group but it was disbanded." She rambled on like this for a few minutes. Colin and Nathan stared at her blankly.

"Could you repeat that more slowly? And would this girl be interested in teaching us too? We all know how hopeless Nathan is with a gun in his hand." Colin grinned and grabbed Nathan in a headlock. Nathan the prisoner grinned sheepishly.

"I can't help it. I can't really aim. But would she teach us? Having at least a decent aim would really help."

"Yeah, I bet she would. She's nice. Her name is Cornelia. And if you guys want her to help you too, I bet you're going to have to study as hard as me." Nyx mock glared at them.

"Study what? How to shoot some bloody bastard like his-" Colin nodded at Nathan's head. "Brother? No offence or anything, Nate. You know he's unbearable."

"Yes. Sometimes it's hard to believe we have identical DNA. But will she really help all of us?"

Nyx sighed. Boys. It took forever to get a point through their heads.

"Yes, yes, I think she will. Stop worrying. There's no reason to. But don't tell your brother."

Nate looked a bit surprised. He did talk to his brother about many things, even though they hadn't spoken for the first week, and he hadn't been considering not telling him.

"Why not? Oh wait…" he thought about it for a few seconds. "That would give him the same advantage as us. I won't tell him. He'll find out anyway. We can't keep secrets from each other very long."

"Why not?" asked Colin.

"I don't know. Somehow we always know what the other is doing. Not completely and not with too much detail, but when he found our dad's algebra book and was teaching himself it, I knew and learned it too, at first from him and then on my own. I learned faster than Erik too. It became a race, who could do a linear equation faster. Then Mom snatched the book." He smiled reminiscently.

"How on earth do you do that? Is it because you're twins?" Nyx asked. She had never heard of such a thing before. Even when Kayla was making up fantasy stories and telling them to her.

Nate shrugged. He didn't know.