Kadotani sat down between Kawashima and Koyama, setting down her tray and looking over her food. "Excellent! Looks like we have meat chunks, plant chunks, and possibly wheat chunks."

"President, how long are we to endure this?"

"Endure it?" Kadotani laughed. "We're here to stay, Momo. We're not leaving. And I'm not the president anymore."

Yuzu looked down at her breakfast, a horrified look on her face. "Six months of this… why does she have it out for me?"

Maho sat two tables away, as close to the back corner as she could. She had hoped to be alone for a moment while they ate breakfast, but Yukari and Mako quickly found their way to her. They sat on either side of her, both contentedly eating the aforementioned food chunks.

Yukari held one up on the end of her fork, inspecting it. "It's a cube… of bean?"

"It's asparagus." Mako wrinkled her nose at it. "I think."

"Why are you two here?" Maho pushed her untouched meal away from her.

"The Sergeant still has Saori and Suzuki out there, as well as two other girls." Yukari pointed to Hana just as she walked into the mess hall. "And she's been sending anyone whose hair isn't short enough over to get it cut."

After standing in line to get something to eat, Hana made her way to the rest of them and dropped into the seat across from Yukari. Her hair was now the shortest among the four of them, and her eyes looked like the life had been drained out of them. She looked to her friends, as if pleading them for help. "Somebody tell me this is just a bad dream."

"Are we not accommodating enough, Private?" Suddenly, Sergeant Dodger was right beside her. She was without her megaphone, but it sounded like she didn't actually need it. "Do you need a pillow? Maybe some cotton blankets? How about a teddy bear? I can lend you mine if you need it!"

Hana shot up out of her seat. "No ma'am! I'm fine, ma'am!"

"Sit the fuck down, Private! You're still in my morning routine, and that means you finish your damn breakfast! I can't have you collapsing from malnourishment on your first day! I need this to last a long time! It's not fun unless you suffer for days on end!"

She sat down, looking across the table at her friends pleadingly. They looked away, not willing to put themselves in the line of fire. Shakily, she started to eat. It wasn't easy, and not because the food was repulsive. If she ignored the taste, the smell, and the texture, then it wasn't all so bad. The Sergeant breathing down her neck was the problem.

"Hurry up, Private Butterball! You need to be all fed and ready to throw up for this morning's run!" This news carried across the mess hall as fast as Sergeant Dodger's voice. There was a low murmur about the prospect of going on a run immediately after eating. The Sergeant shouted across the room. "And you're all experts at war, are you? The enemy won't attack right after you've eaten on account of you might get cramps! That's right! We're fighting a considerate foe who lets you digest instead of hitting you whenever they damn well please or, fucking shocker, when you're at any disadvantage they can exploit! Chow down and I want to see all of you outside in ten minutes! If you're late, we'll have a boxing lesson instead! Is that understood?"

All the girls tried their best to answer together. "Yes ma'am!" She didn't really care, as she knew half of them had their mouths full. Possibly less than half, considering the food. But it wasn't there to water their mouths and whet their appetites. It was there to get them used to eating military rations. One day, they would learn to look at the raw meat from some animal they caught in the field as a lucky break. She wanted them used to tough living.

Yukari waited for the Sergeant to march out of the mess hall before turning to Maho. "What do you think about her? Sergeant Dodger, I mean."

Maho sighed. She really had wanted to be alone right now. "Private Akiyama. Or is it Private Oddball? I suggest you focus on being not worth her time. Do well, but not well enough to be outstanding. That way she'll have no reason to look at you for more than a second or two."

Mako spat out a plant cube. "Yeah… that's nasty."

Maho shook her head and continued. "I would prefer the three of you kept your distance from me. I don't want to group together, I don't want to make friends, and I certainly don't want to delve into the Sergeant's history. Eat up, and don't sit next to me again."

Mako spat out a meat cube and looked up at Maho. "Wouldn't sitting alone make you a prime target for her?"

"Shut up and eat, Slug. I'll manage."

None of them wanted to even guess what the temperature was. They ran together through the blazing desert. Though it was hardly together, considering the whole group of them stretched out for half a kilometer from Noriko, who was far ahead, and several girls who were barely able to stagger along at the back. Sergeant Dodger rode around in a jeep, shouting at them all through her megaphone. She was pretty well ignoring the frontrunners for now.

They'd been ordered to stop and wait for everyone else once they reached the flagpole at the halfway point of their run. Maho ran up to the flagpole and stopped. Noriko and Erwin were the only Ooarai girls that had beat her there. Katyusha was there, along with Nonna and Klara. There was also a girl she recognized from Anzio, and one from Koala Forest, but she didn't know either of their names. Coming along behind her, she could see the redhead from Saint Gloriana's, as well as Erika, and Kay and Naomi from Saunders. Saemonza and Hoshino from Ooarai weren't far behind them. The bulk of the girls were in a large group after that, and she could see Yukari at the head of the group.

Dodger's jeep pulled up beside the ones who had reached the checkpoint, and she started yelling at the vast majority that hadn't arrived yet. "Move your fucking asses! I know quadriplegics that could have made it here by now! If you're not all here and standing in formation in a minute and a half, I'm feeding you to the dingoes!"

Sure enough, in the next minute and a half, nearly everyone made it to the flagpole. Saori and Momo were the last two to reach them before the time was up. Dodger turned on the last girl with a fury. She shouted unrepeatable things at Nozomi as she staggered into formation after the time limit. Midoriko shook her head in disappointment, even though she had just barely made it in time herself.

Dodger called Nozomi out of the formation. "Private Konparu! You're disqualified! Go over there and give me two hundred pushups!" She waited for the targeted girl to begin her punishment, then turned back to the others. Ninety-eight remained, waiting for her word. "Alright, you fucking cunts! You have two minutes break! You get a little drink of water and a chance for a ride back to base!"

The male NCO driving the jeep got out and walked around to the back. He stood up on top of the container they had been hauling around and grabbed the hose that was attached to it. The container was full of water. He casually aimed the hose at the girls in formation and turned on the hose, spraying water through the air at their faces. This was met with almost unanimous protest and complaint. Once he was sure he'd hit all of them, totally apathetic to whether or not they actually managed to drink any or if it just went up their noses and messes up their glasses, as was certainly Momo's case, he turned it off and jumped down from the jeep.

Dodger pointed to the NCO standing at attention. "Now that you've all met Corporal Dex, you'll all have a chance to take out your frustrations on him! The first person to land a hit on the Corporal gets a free ride back to base! Any takers?" She looked immediately disappointed that no one was jumping at the opportunity.

It was Rosehip who stepped up first. "I'll give it a shot, ma'am!" Somewhere behind her, Darjeeling facepalmed.

Rosehip readied herself, holding her fists up in front of her like she was boxing. The Corporal just stood there, his hands clasped behind him, unmoving. She stepped forward, aiming a punch straight at the center of his chest. Suddenly, just as her punch was about to connect, he wasn't there anymore. His elbow struck the back of her head, and she fell face-first into the dirt.

Pepperoni, Kay, and Saemonza stepped forward and attacked. None of them were even sure how they suddenly ended up on the ground. Erika tried next, but he sidestepped and sent her flying into the side of the jeep. A few others charged from the formation. He kicked them aside one after the other, finishing off with a roundhouse kick. Turning back to the girls, he found himself staring down at Nonna.

The dark-haired girl seemed much more calm than she should have been. She nodded to him. "Zdravstvuy."

She delivered a punch straight at his chest, just like Rosehip had done. He caught her fist. She tried to hit him with her other hand, but he caught it as well. She struggled for a brief moment, and then he flipped her over onto the ground. The Corporal never said a word. He stood up and turned back to the formation again.

Katyusha shot out of the formation head first, ramming into the Corporal's stomach. He collapsed to his knees, holding his stomach, then keeled over onto his side. Katyusha casually walked away and climbed up onto the jeep.

Dodger glared down at her. "You're going to be a lot of trouble, aren't you."

Katyusha sat in the passenger seat. It was vacant, as Sergeant Dodger was standing on the hood now. She looked up at the Sergeant. "Katyusha will wait here."

Dodger just clicked on the megaphone, aiming it at the girls that were on the ground. "Get up, you lazy pieces of shit! You may have nothing else to do today, but I also run a lemonade stand, cause God knows I don't get paid enough for this bullshit! Get off the ground!"

The Corporal got up and, painfully, sat back down in the driver seat of the jeep. Leaning over the windshield, Dodger nodded to him. He grunted in acknowledgment and drove away, leaving the girls behind.

Once it genuinely didn't look like they were going to head back for the others, Katyusha finally spoke up. "Katyusha is wondering how much trouble you will be in if any of them die."

"Private Polyp, I can't let you idiots die on the first day. I want this to last a long time." She glared back at Katyusha. "Listen, Private. We can get along just fine if you do what I tell you to do and stop showing off. You're not interesting enough, and I got a hundred of you morons to work with. I'll be dividing you up into squads soon enough, and I want to put all the ones I don't have to pay attention to in the same squad. Play along, and you'll be in command of that squad."

Katyusha nodded. "Yes ma'am."

"And not a word of this to any of the others, or you'll be doing pushups all day, every day, for weeks." She turned around, falling silent until the base was in sight again. "Oh yeah, Private Suzuki is still doing pushups. Well, I can't sit down just yet. I have to make sure the obstacle course is ready."