(A/N: This chapter was fueled by the Peanuts song "Flashbeagle", a favorite of mine. Hence the chapter name.)
At breakfast the morning after the night before, Dolly had gotten her breakfast and was going to sit down when someone bumped into her, causing her to lose her balance and fall to the ground, spilling her meal in the process. Except.. she never made contact with the ground, just looked on in shock as she and her meal hung frozen in mid air and the cadet who had bumped into her become humiliated as she took a tumble as if she slipped on a banana peel and slipped her meal all over herself.
Instinctively, Arnett, Park, and Elizabeth glanced around for the one person they knew could probably do that. Their suspicions were correct when they noticed Cameron walking over to Dolly, still holding her and her meal up using the force. Arnett and Elizabeth didn't know why, but seeing Cameron with Dolly made them feel jealous a little bit, something which confused both girls.
Suffice it to say, it was very clear to Cameron that, judging from the angry stare coming from the girl that had tried to knock down Dolly that had been humiliated in the process, that she was not at all pleased with his actions. For his part, Cameron really just despised the girl outright.. not just for her seemingly downright fantastic hatred of a girl who wanted to clear the stain left by her sister's name on their family's image, but also the lengths she was willing to go to do it. Abyss, even though he was a commando droid and supposed to not have opinions of those he fought for, be they commanders or civilians of the C.I.S. and their allies, could not help but share the same disgusted opinion at the girl that his commander was having.
Having served under Grievous alongside Cameron on multiple occasions by this point, the modified Commando Droid had begun to see why the Supreme Commander of the Droid Armies really hated most Neimoidians, except the Royal Guards as well as a few competent Neimoidian military commanders including the rising star Mar Tuuk and well as the nephew of the late Daultay Dofine, Lushros Dofine, all of whom were Neimoidians that both he and Grievous respected. The Upper Class Neimoidians, particularly exemplified by Nute Gunray and the equally idiotic Lok Durd, were all cowards that oozed nepotism, corruption, greed, and grudges held for way too long. Although Grievous had no tolerance for droids - or people - that ran away from combat, he and Abyss understood that no matter what, such cases can happen, no matter how one tries to prevent this. Some people just couldn't handle the pressure, and despite being 100% harsh against these kinds of people, Grievous had become slightly lenient thanks to also being an adoptive father to Cameron. To Abyss, this especially bore true in the case of Dolly Parnell's sister. The elder Parnell simply broke under the strain of combat and fled, something which the Nova exploited. While dishonorable in some eyes, it was just a case, as Cameron would say, of "not being cut out after all for what you're trained to be." That Abyss understood, which made the fact that these wealthy, conceited girls were doing everything in their power to make sure Dolly never brought back honor to her family name because of her sister's actions to be completely absurd.
The fact of the matter was, her fellow cadets were too conceited to even realize that not all Parnell's were bad apples, choosing instead to let their hatred of her sister for leading to their relative's deaths cloud their judgement. It was, even to a droid like Abyss who wasn't supposed to think, an absolutely wrong way to think. Lord, people can be so dim witted and idiotic even here, the droid thought to itself.
Cameron, meanwhile, felt the same way as Abyss, except the boy himself felt a lot more strongly about them. While he used to not really care about the squabbles of the nobility, or higher-class, people between each other prior to the war, he had already seen for himself, along with Abyss and Grievous, plenty of the kind of dirtiness people like the ones bullying Dolly Parnell indulged in while fighting for the C.I.S. Witnessing it felt more like a sobering wake-up call to the indecencies that even fellow Separatists, as much as the Republic the second-in-command and his best friend, most trusted subordinate, and confidant were fighting, trafficked in. It may have been in a time of peace, for sure given the circumstances both droid and commander found themselves in, but it still felt wrong.
"Excuse me?!" says the cadet that had tripped Dolly in the first place. "What the hell is wrong with you?" Cameron, however, just didn't respond, using the force to right Parnell back onto her feet, before calmly walking over to the cafeteria people, getting an exact replica plate of what Dolly had before the incident had occurred, and a plate for himself, before simply handing the girl the plate and with a couple of audibly heard words, "What your sister did doesn't have to define who you are in their eyes. I have confidence you will do great things", simply walked off over to Abyss and a table on the far side of the cafeteria to eat his meal, leaving the cadet still on the floor, her friends, and the rest of the cafeteria flabbergasted. Well, mostly flabbergasted. Arnett and Elizabeth both felt more jealous, and more confused.
It would be safe to say that after what happened in the cafeteria that morning, Cameron became even more of a mystery to everyone in the training camp, and to an extent, everyone involved with the Pandora program and who paid attention to them. The boy himself, however, just paid them no heed, simply enjoying himself and throwing himself into training as he kept his reflexes honed while doing sparring with one of his Magnaguards later that afternoon, while the cadets were all washing their clothes. To make it even more fan-service fuel, he was doing it shirtless due to the heat and his connection to the force making his shirt a little too hot for him to be in, but even so, he wasn't showing signs of even breaking a sweat, even as all the scars from the crash and before, as well as his stigma, were clearly visible on his chest, sides, and back.
"God, that boy is so dreamy.." one of the cadets behind Arnett and Elizabeth called out, causing both girls and to an extent Dolly, who was nearby and happened to overhear the comment, to feel even more jealous than before. They really couldn't understand why he made them feel that way, as if the mere act of some other girl talking with him was enough to make them so angry about it. They couldn't understand it at all.
Cameron, meanwhile, didn't really notice. It was just training as usual for him, and he had to really train. He was fully aware of the fact that he wasn't going up against clone troopers and Jedi, who even in the case of units like Skywalker's elite 501st Legion, were pretty predictable opponents that most of the time, if Skywalker or some other unknown factor, whether it be person or thing or something else, intervened, his droids and he himself could usually beat. Looking up what humanity had on these Nova, it became evident - if what he had heard from Keith back in the hospital room hadn't made it already clear enough - that he was dealing with very unpredictable opponents. Not only that, but the intelligence showing that these things were evolving and changing up their timing had him definitely worried. So he had no other choice. He just poured his heart into his training, oblivious to everything around him. In a sense, he was like Flash Beagle, except he was completely unaware of it at all.
There was also another reason for why he was training, one that would rear itself into frightening reality and change everything for both the Twenty-Eighth Generation of Pandora, the potential limiter students who witnessed it, West Genetics, Chevalier, the droids under his command and himself less than six weeks later. There would be a reason that the events of graduation from boot camp for the 28th Generation of Pandora would be kept under Chevalier wraps until after the Eleventh Nova Clash, and those that had witnessed what had happened and survived would be sworn to secrecy and be forbidden to tell anyone outside of Genetics or Chevalier the truth about what happened that surreal weekend. A reason that for now, was becoming more and more of a ticking time-bomb right inside of Cameron as he trained in front of the girls that afternoon, and he had absolutely no clue of it.