Section 9 Training Session #1

Jun stared in confusion at the scene in front of him. Apparently his genius sister had one of her infamous brain blasts if he had to make a guess.

Ichi, Malcolm, and Hiromi were semi-consciously laid out on the living room floor. That wasn't the issue.

They all had wires connecting their neural ports to a central portable mainframe which was in turn connected to his sister's laptop. Worrying, but still not necessarily a problem.

"Agghhhh! I'm getting chased again by the fucking blind dog! AHHHH!"

"...And Malcolm died again. How are you doing Hiro…Oh shit! NO, STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM MY NECK! AHHHH!"

"...I died four minutes ago because no one warned me about the landmine hallway…again…"

No, the issue was that his sister's chooms have been screaming and convulsing for the past 30 minutes and he was getting damn tired of it. He better not get any noise complaints!

"Sorry chooms, looks like this moon might have been too hard for us…" Motoko stated apologetically as she sat cross-legged in her little makeshift office on the coffee table. She glanced at him and gave a tired smile. "Hey Jun-ni!"

Jun frowned and crossed his arms. "Soooo, mind telling me why you're torturing your friends?"

"Training regime." Motoko stated simply as she typed in new commands on her laptop,

"Please save us from her! I don't want to be a scrap worker anymore!" Hiromi cried out only half-jokingly without blinking her eyes, her body paralyzed on the ground.

"Training regime." Motoko repeated firmly.

The BD must be pretty intense which only further aroused Jun's interest. He began tapping his foot impatiently.

His sister rolled her eyes but acquiesced to his silent command. "I decided that Section 9 needed to up their game by undergoing proper training. I'm still working on an official schedule but for now I wanted to see how well the team could perform under duress."

"...So, you're playing a multiplayer BD game?"

"Oh shit, even the menu music is starting to creep me out!" Ichi muttered unhelpfully. Jun ignored him.

"Exactly! My chooms gain experience without us having to go through the trouble of traveling somewhere remote for drills!"

The idea had some merit, Jun admitted to himself. In essence, Motoko is probably using some BD she bought from the net as an affordable alternative to Military Simulations. The Tyger Claws and the Kamikaze each had their own library of WarSim BD's so he was pretty familiar with the process.

"Huh. What's the BD? Where did you get it?"

"Oh, I coded it myself!" Motoko said happily as her chooms collectively shivered on the floor.

Oh.

Oh no.

Jun rubbed his forehead in exhaustion. "Toko, what hellish landscape have you strapped your chooms in?"

"Rude! The plot I came up with is that they're space workers employed for a megacorp and their job is to enter super creepy bases to recover antiques. But the twist is that the bases are crawling with horrific beasts and they have to complete their goals without dying! It's super fun! I'm playing the part of mission control so I stay on the landing craft and they get to practice working together without being able to depend on direct help from me! It's a great idea!"

"Please save us Jun! I can't sleep in the dark anymore! I keep seeing shadowy leaf men walking towards me and then I start crying!" Hiromi sobbed out.

"I didn't think Jack-in-the-Boxes were scary, but I guess I underestimated the twisted mind of our team ninja…" Malcolm whimpered like a traumatized victim.

Ichi just stared blankly into the void, his spirit long since lost to the abyss.

"...that's what you get for calling my mics cat ears…" Motoko whispered hotly.

"Motoko, you're on timeout."

"Dammit!"

I'm anticipating a training arc sometime in the future so I decided to come up with some silly ideas of my own. Here's the first one based vaguely on personal experiences.