His padded flash suit tightly squeezing around his skin, Timmy Lane laughed through the visor of his dark green and brown helm as he kicked off the wall of the Battle Room in order to send himself barreling forward. Someone a few meters off his flight path tried to shoot at him while he was flying, but Timmy's speed was too great and the light didn't come close to hitting its target. As he passed by the shooter, he pivoted himself in mid-air and looked backwards to shoot at the boy's back. He turned to continue shooting forward, and his eyes darted sideways as he heard a voice.
"You're mine!" it shouted as he turned his head enough to see another soldier floating above his position. The soldier fired in what should have been a clear shot, but was too late as Timmy twisted himself again in order to thrust his leg at the star he had been aiming for. This action sent him shooting sideways, rotating around and around at high speed. He caught himself on another star and extended his arm to fire upwards at the second attack's location – hitting him dead in the chest to instantly freeze him. The frozen soldier's body stiffened and he began to float slowly and aimlessly in the air. "No fair! You cheater!"
Holding onto the star, Timmy got a closer look and recognized the soldier's voice and face. It was the newly arrived launchie from yesterday. Lynn, he thought her name was. "All's fair in love and war, bab," he snickered, and she snapped back angrily; verbally since her body was frozen.
"That was da bomb, Tim!" another boy said as he and three others pushed themselves down to their level from further up; "you were jus like a comet!" Timmy chuckled humbly.
"You've made good improvement," the officer of the six man sub-troop, Amadei said, "continue at this rate and you could make Second in a matter of months. That said, don't do that last maneuver again; it's a good way to sprain your ankle. I'll show you some better alternatives in a bit. And if Feliz were a veteran he would have flashed you before you passed him."
"I'll keep that in mind, LC," Timmy replied, letting go of the star and allowing himself to float in place while the Commander on the other side of the arena used his hook to unfreeze everyone in the room. Feliz and Lynn sprang to life and pushed themselves towards the gathered group as quickly as they could manage.
When she came near, Amadei turned to Lynn. "Next time make sure your opponent doesn't have anything to alter their path next time you shoot at them, else you're leaving yourself wide open for a counter." Lynn grumbled to herself irritably. "Don't worry, you're still a rookie."
After having been in Turtle Army for more than a month - going through over twenty practice sessions and four matches - Timmy had gotten a pretty good idea as to how things worked around here. His toon, Alpha Toon, was expendable. All of the 18 boys within it, save the Lieutenant Commander and his two Seconds, were young, inexperienced, or just plain unskilled. Their jobs were that of sacrificial pawns – provide meat shields or distractions for the smaller, but more elite toons. Amadei and his Seconds were skilled at training, their official duty being to improve the skills of the newbies placed under their command and then transfer them to one of the other three toons once they made enough progress. Timmy personally didn't think he had much time left in Alpha Toon – it was a matter of days or weeks before his promotion to Beta, Gamma, or Delta Toons, he expected. Perhaps the only reason it was taking so long was that Amadei had taken a personal attachment to him and wanted to give him all the training he could before sending him away. Or maybe it was just his lackluster grades, not bad but not good, that were holding him back.
"Alright, form up and let's practice the Ring Drill!" Amadei shouted, and the five of them kicked off in unison to follow him upwards.
In his month here, he had come to understand that Commander Tokar was intelligent – even amongst the academic elites gathered in Battle School. He had been in charge of Turtle Army for a long time now, over a year, and spent most of his days in his cabin studying or strategizing. He was cold and calculating, positioning and ordering his troops in battle as if he were playing pieces on a chessboard. Though not the most social of Commanders, he ran a highly organized army. Turtle Army wasn't one of the better teams, but it was far from the worst too. Some say they might actually make it comfortably into the top ten in the rankings if he weren't so insistent on transferring good soldiers of his army for ignoring their studies. Timmy had another, opinion, however: Neil's demeanor made him distant from the rest of his army so that it was hard to truly come together under him. They all respected him, in a way, but his treatment of them as pieces in a strategy game lowered their team spirit and kept them from truly coming together under his command.
Neil's leadership was flawed, but there was still much Timmy could learn from him. It seemed to him that many commanders and leaders in Battle School were determined to prove their own merit – either commanding their armies in their own way with no regard to what their past leaders had taught them, or just blindly copying and directing standard battle formations. He would be different. When he was a commander – and he knew he would be, some day – he would make full use of the strategies and styles of the commanders and toon leaders he worked under, ironing out their flaws on improving on them until they became his own. And he would teach his followers to do the same. Unlike most, Timmy's interests were not only to show off his own achievements, but to leave a lasting legacy as well. Even if his name was forgotten, his students and the students of his students would continue building off his own style and those of others and steadily develop the game into something greater. And he was the type to, whenever he had a dream, always see it through.
Neil fingered his hook methodically at his side, having positioned himself near the top of the Battle Room above where his gate would be were this an official match so that he had a full view of his army training below. Alpha Toon occupying the lower third of the room was split into three groups and practicing basic battle skills, as usual. The amount of training time dedicated to formations and other tactics or skills focused on Toons was kept to a minimum. As pawns, they wouldn't need it much; simply honing their basic abilities took precedence so that they might each last a little longer on their own. At their level, complex Toon maneuvers would only cause them to trip over themselves anyways.
Conversely, Beta Toon occupied a quarter of the room near the top where they were practicing support and defensive formations. Strong, sturdy, and reliable – if Alpha Toon were the pawns then Beta was his Rook. In the central area of the sphere, overlapping with the others areas, the smaller Gamma and Delta Toons were moving together at high speed in tightly packed formations; darting through the stars nimbly and accurately as they rained fire on imaginary opponents and avoided nonexistent fire. Swift and skilled, elite strike forces ready to slip through enemy lines and obliterate them unaware – they were the Bishops. And he was the King, directing them all. Every piece had its place.
"A winning strategy is only as good as the hand that plays it."
His heart beat hard and he clenched his fist uneasily as the words resounded through his mind. Those dark, penetrating eyes and slight malicious smirk briefly flashed before him as he closed his eyes. 'I'm remembering pointless things again,' he told himself silently, shaking his head and returning to his senses. Why did those particular words continue to haunt him even after two long years? Was it just proof that that no matter how much he planned and strategized, he would always be second rate? The fact that the thought even crossed his mind angered him.
Many minutes passed, and he raised his voice when the halfway mark of the three hour practice session was reached. "Alright, move on to the second stage of the training! Beta, you're up against Gamma and Delta! Alpha, get back together and start practicing group vs. group skirmishes!" As his voice echoed through the Battle Room, the numerous troops moved to comply and continue with their practice. He watched with prudence, and used his hook to drive himself towards the area where Beta, Gamma, and Delta were training so he could oversee their performance with more precision.
'No, that's not true. I will excel, no matter the obstacles.'
The sound of faucets running en-masse echoed through the room as Turtle Army veteran Hayao walked through the long and narrow shower room. Sweat dripped from his brow from a hard day of practice, and a white towel was wrapped around his waist. The showers, small and separated by low walls, were mostly occupied by his fellow troops, and he smiled sociably as many of them called him out when he walked past them.
"Ho Yao!"
"Ho Yao!"
"Ho Yao!"
He chuckled, pumping his fist back at them. "Kon'nichiwa! Who we be?"
"Turtle Army! Snap 'em good!" They roared in unison, and he finally found and entered an empty stall on the left row. He threw his towel on the rack and turned on the handle while starting to scrub.
"Ho Yao," another voice said, this one in a lower and calmer tone as its owner leaned over the low wall in the adjacent stall. The boy was 9, with a short, stocky build and soaked blonde hair. "You hear the news?"
"Which news?"
"I overheard it earlier… day say LC is wantin' to make Lane a Second for Gamma." The boy turned his head and pointed behind him, at a redheaded and freckled boy showering six stalls down; appearing to be conversing with those close to him.
"Tim? Heck no! We're next in line, right? I'm not taking orders from some Alpha Trash."
"I hear ya', but iss what they're sayin."
"I've been in Beta three months; some alpha can't just come in, show off a little, and get promoted. The heck does LC know? He good, but he still in Alpha." He stared down at the unknowing Timm with a frown, until noticing the girl in the stall beside his; whom he appeared to be close to. Slowly, his frown grew into a devious smirk as he remembered her from the day before, plotting vengeance. "Maybe we should give him a little lesson," he said under his breath.
The other veteran laughed. "Yeah, maybe."
"You upset?" Timmy snickered, leaning down to peer down on Lynn as, fresh from the shower, she laid down on her lower bunk. "Sleepy already?"
"Get lost, doll back!" Lynn replied, knocking him backwards with a backhanded fist to the face. As he fell to the floor, she grunted irritably while turning on her side away from him. Timmy had repeatedly up showed her throughout the practice and as much as she had daydreamed about coming in as an ace rookie, the reality was that she could barely keep up. To make matters worse, not only had he and the other three troops in Amadei's sub-toon suddenly start gathering around her, but he – the most bothersome of them all – happened to sleep on the bunk right beside hers and took full advantage of it to mess with her. "Don't bother me!"
"What's got you so grumpy?" Timmy asked, landing on his buttocks in the space between their bunks and rubbing his nose where Lynn had struck it. "Sad that I'm better than ya?"
"Of course not!" she yelled while looking away from him; "and you're not better than me!"
"Today's practice said otherwise."
"I had a cold, so I was taking it easy!"
"I could show ya some moves in free time if you want."
"I said get lost!"
She grumbled grabbing her pillow and slamming it over the side of her head to cover her ears and block out his annoying taunts.
Sitting before his desk and the holographic battle room simulator once again, Neil ran various tests on it silently for quite some time. Tch, he sputtered as his programmed strategy failed miserably once again. Dark circles were forming around his eyes, and he lowered his head to his desk in frustration; distorting the projected image before him in the process. His head shot back up as the sound of a note sliding through his door was heard. Standing up, he walked to pick it up.
Rustam Bagdanov, Bigfoot Army, Friday, 0700
3 Days Notice