TransFans: Bunch of Buggers

[Shanti418]

I'm the best at all KINDS of stripping. lol

[Aaron Hong]

The dissemination of information in the military is more often than not a very tricky business indeed.

Everyone's seen that classic case of 'you're breaking up' in movies and so on, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Vital administrative commands from the brass often get lost in the sea of who-was-thrown-into-the-brig and what-the-hell-was-in-that-casserole that forms the very backbone of the military grapevine, a force as potent as the actual chain of command. In these cases it's often best to just go back to basics, such as the hardcopy of the Battalion Routine Order currently posted on a glass framed corkboard in the Officer's Mess and several other locations in camp.

Metal Vendetta and Rebis were currently the only ones standing in front of the noticeboard, reading this important document. It had reminders for whoever had early training the next day as well, along with the names of every Designated Officer and NCO for the next 24hrs. Rebis heaved a sigh of relief when he failed to locate his name in that list.

"Looks like someone else's blowing the bugle for you next morning," said Emvee. "Oh wait, here's why... our flight training starts at the crack of dawn. Bloody hell, can't they give me a car so I can chauffer myself to the airstrip?"

Rebis barked in agreement.

"Hey, look at this. A Designated Driver will be on duty as well, I can just make him drive me there. There's even his cell number so I can raise him at any time..."

Rebis suddenly let out a series of short barks and ruffs. Not a common occurence in your everyday conversation, mainly because there aren't that many people or even regular TransFans that understand Rebisspeak. This was where the current look on EmVee's face came in helpful.

"...you're sleeping at my place tonight? But why?!"

***

For the sake of plot convenience, this fanfic will now clip forward in time for about 8 hours to better illustrate the last point being made, ie. why Rebis would be bunking over at Emvee's. No, not for that.

The two new flight-buddies were required to wake up before the official revellie in order to be in time for training, and since the bugle wouldn't be blown for another half hour, it was up to Rebis and his icy cold nose to save the day.

"AAAIIIIEEEEE!! Rebis, for the love of... look, just five more minutes..."

Rebis barked in a manner that left no room for further argument, and Metal Vendetta dragged himself out of bed.

***

By the time the bugle did blow, EmVee and Rebis were already in a jeep leaving the barracks. The revellie didn't give EmVee enough of a jolt (not that the jeep's rumbling engine wasn't doing its part), which probably would have disappointed PTE Senior's Covenant, who'd been given this vital task the day before.

Senior was forced to stop and pant after two repetitions, just as sergeant major Papa Snarl stepped towards the podium just to see how it was going. "Oh boy... I'm sorry, sir..."

"'S alreet, mate. Anyone who din't hear that by noo is lookin' it a week in the brig anyways," said Papa Snarl reassuringly. "Ye did good."

"...thank you, sir," said Senior at last, having caught his breath."

"Ye just remember to wash that out 'n hand it back tae Rebis when ye be done now," Snarl reminded him. "Carry on, soldier."

Senior stood at attention as Papa Snarl turned and left, then blew for about five notes before realising that Snarl essentially said that the bugle was last blown through by a dog, and started spitting profusely.

[Predabot]

Well, if that wasn't reminder for Seniour to take mouth-hygiene seriously, I don't know.

[Aaron Hong]

***

"Rob, we're here."

"Bweh?"

Metal Vendetta had just picked up one of the most vital military skills ever - catching forty winks on a moving vehicle with a loud engine running on uneven road. Even with official guidelines in place, like the minimum four hours' sleep requirement, one would often find that four hours was in no way enough, as one would find himself spending the first hour just getting to sleep. Either you had to clmb for a bit to find a good spot, or the aches and pains of training simply decided not to sleep that night.

Metal Vendetta needed a few more jolts from potholes just to get awake enough to realise something else. "...Obfleur?"

"...yeah, it's me," Ob replied from the driver's seat of the jeep. "Don't look so surprised. I didn't have much paper qualifications to talk about, so they assigned me here in the end. Thank goodness for a driver's licence."

"...okay," said EmVee, as the jeep rolled to a stop. "I just figured you for something bigger than this, that's all. Something important..."

"Being a driver is important, Rob," said Obfleur. "It's not the years you put into TransFans, it's the work. You all know well enough I never was the most productive one in TransFans..."

"Rrrowf."

Obfleur went quiet, as he thought he heard what Rebis was trying to say, just as he and Metal Vendetta climbed out of the jeep and started walking towards the hangar. Emvee just gave Rebis an odd look for a second, then carried on walking, but with each step they took, the real meaning became clearer and clearer to Obfleur, until it started screaming itself into his ears.

You never needed to be.

***

Tired Tracks nearly dozed off into his morning pancakes when a sudden shot snapped him back to full consciousness.

He nearly hid under the cookhouse table too, only LROP and shaxper were already grabbign him by the shoulders. "Dude, take it easy," said LROP, but not too loudly, because it was a pretty busy hour at the cookhouse. "You knew that would happen. Didn't you read the BRO last night?"

"Whose bro?!"

shaxper sighed. "The Battalion Routine Order, TT. C company gets to be the first to actually fire those rifles, on this very morning."

Tracks calmed down a bit as he worked it out for himself. "Oh yeah... with a firing range and everything?"

"No, over the fence at the Southern border, at passing civilians in Seibertron," said LROP. "Of course in a firing range. They're not taking score or anything though, it's the 'zeroing' thing that Leatherneck told us about."

"Zeroing?" asked TT.

"Adjusting the sights to make sure the rifle hits where the sights are aligned," said Leatherneck himself, sitting a couple of seats away. "You guys are damned lucky you get to do this later in the day, you know that? The afternoon sun will mess up your eyesight and your aim something nasty."

"Oh, okay," said LROP and Tracks.

There wasn't much else to talk about at the time. shaxper and LROP each had one pancake left, and LROP thought about soaking his in coffee, but wasn't sure if Tired Tracks would fly into a rage at the sight of him using coffee that way.

"Say, anyone saw Predabot this morning?" asked Tired Tracks.

"I think I saw one of the MPs escorting him away early in the morning," said Leatherneck. "Not in cuffs or anything, just... chauffeuring him off... not sure why..."

***

It would have been very easy indeed to get the wrong idea, if there had been more witnesses to Predabot being driven off in an MPs' Humvee, but not as easy as if would have been if the current sight in the Military Police's interrogation room was ever made public.

Predabot had the dubious honor of being both the victim and chief witness in the shocking, yet-to-be-explained case of the midnight dragging and shooting, for lack of a better term. That aside, it may be easier to explain the current state of Predabot, folded in half in an armchair and sobbing loudly, if we wound the clock back for about five minutes.

Done.

"Thank you for agreeing to come here on such short notice, Recruit Predabot," said Sergeant angloconvoy of the Military Police Corps. "I'm sorry we couldn't print it in the Routine Order, because we're trying to keep this as low-profile as we can. You'll see that this is not an actual interrogation - you're in a comfy armchair now, there's no table with a lamp I could point into your face, in fact this room's rather well lit, we've even got some of Aaron Hong's Retro Wars artwork on the walls..."

angloconvoy stopped when he realised he was losing Predabot.

"Look, I may as well get to the point," said angloconvoy. "We've been investigating your bannination back and forth, and while pranks like this have to be expected in any army, we still don't know how someone could have gotten a live round of bannunition that far into the barracks, much less fire it off. We need your help, Predabot. I know it's a lot to ask of you but I need you to remember."

Dammit, you idiot, not all at once, thought Orion Pax from behind a double-sided mirror. Standing behind him was Weirdwolf, one of the mods and currently Major General in TransFans. Both watched with concern as Predabot licked his lips and wiped his face with both hands, looking very nervous indeed.

"I thought you said anglo would handle this all right," said Weirdwolf.

"I know, I told him Pred might be a sensitive subject to work with," said Orion Pax. He stopped to heave a sigh. "Look, I won't lie to you, sir. This matter has grown a lot harder to handle, particulary due to the nature of the case. You know what bannunition does, right?"

"It's a tightly-encrypted script that completely removes every trace of a board user's IP address," said Weirdwolf, parroting one of dozens of documents that Best First made him memorise.

"Predabot had to re-register, using a workstation and the IP address of his school library. It's got firewalls like you wouldn't believe. They're interfering with Predabot's transmission, his posts..."

"...his memories," said Weirdwolf, as the truth came to light. Predabot was not as oblivious to the situation as everyone had believed - rather, the trauma had hit him the hardest. The fact that he was the victim here probably contributed in some small way, but it's easy to forget that when it's someone you barely even know.

"...the pain, they kept hitting, and hitting... I just wanted it to end, more than anything... *sob* I just wanted it to end..."

[Aaron Hong]

IT'S ALLIIIIIIIIIVE!!!1!

***

The time had finally come, to seperate the men from the ones who can't help but blink when a gun goes off within a foot of their faces.

A Company had spent the last hour or so having lunch in one of the training sheds, listening to the shots as B Company went through the paces. A couple of them had snuck over to see what was going on, and they brought back some disturbing stories. Optimus Prime Rib had been allowed to fire two rifles at once though, just to get the feel of it, though accuracy was a different matter altogether. And spiderfrommars not only spent half the time loading and unloading but had enough hands left over to stabilise himself on the ground.

"I hope you've all been paying attention for all your arms briefings so far," said Leatherneck to the whole of B Company, "because this is where it all really comes together. As you all know, getting your rifle properly zeroed is the key to better accuracy, and for some of you, actually hitting the target - but that's just a small part of it. What are the fundamentals of firing the M3 rifle, soldiers?"

"Give your eyes a second to focus," said LROP.

"Exhale sharply and hold 25% of your breath when you fire," said shaxper.

"Squeeze the trigger without snapping," said Shanti.

"No coffee the night before, it'll wreck your stability," Tired Tracks offered.

"...oookay," said Leatherneck eventually. "This is it, soldiers, they're clearing the area now... first detail, up!"

LROP found himself third in line as the first ten B Company soldiers got up and filed towards the firing range. This was basically a wide, woodwalled alley, with horizontal beams across the top, mounted with numbered signboards so everyone knew what lane they'd be standing in. The terrain was mostly grassy, with bare mud paths trodden out after everyone else had walked down to the targets to see how well they did. The firing line itself was bare concrete, with steel covers hiding ready-made foxholes at every lane. What the soldiers couldn't see was the treacherous cliff drop behind the target area - the whole thing had been built on a convenient hill, where stray bullets could fly off into the distance and hit nothing important.

Well, here goes everything, thought LROP as he lifted his steel covers and climbed into his foxhole. A couple of sandbags were in there, and he picked one up and placed it on the mouth of the foxhole in front of him, then held his rifle in firing position, placing it on the sandbag to sight for the target. It was the universal Canadian Bull zeroing target, basically a boxy inverted U in stark black on white paper, and LROP wondered what SGT Blacksword might have thought upon learning of this.

Time to say goodbye to Canadian bull.

***

And five hundred feet above their heads, Metal Vendetta and Rebis sat in their shiny PWN-3D, hurtling through the sky at subsonic speed. It was surprisingly quiet, thanks in part to the soundproofing of the cockpit, but EmVee hadn't really expected things to be this peaceful, even with his flying experience. The calm before the storm, they'd call it... and what I'd call it if I liked pimping the English language that much, heh heh...

Rebis controlled his half of the plane through a narrow crawlspace under EmVee's instrument panel, a space that ended in a smaller panel of buttons and a plasma display that not only showed what was in front but underneath as well. Emvee had to be careful not to step on Rebis' tail or hindquarters as he piloted the plane, taking it out of autopilot as the clouds broke before them...

...they had targets of their own as well, helium balloons at different sizes and colors, all carrying large styrofoam airplane models to represent whatever the brass thought the enemy would throw at them. There were the obligatory MiG planes, the Rattler and Liquidator from Cobra, and even a Red Baron triplane that Snarlos threw in for a laugh.

"All right Rebis, let's do this... MEETTAAAAAALL VEEEEENDETTTAAAAAA!!!"

***

Aaron Hong, sitting on the back of one of the 3-ton trucks that ferried the soldiers to the firing range, watched as bullets tore down the alleys and into the waiting targetboards. It was only four shots per firer of course, but it was important by dint of it being the first time the recruits handled their firearms with live ammo, and all in all, it went pretty well.

There was always the long waits as the computers (within computers - yeah, that joke's been done) calculated the recruits' accuracy via their grouping, or the distance between the four bulletholes they'd punched into the targets, and Leatherneck and the other sergeants supervised the recruits as they used the tools from their rifle cleaning kits to realign the sights. And there were of course the outbursts of laughter whenever someone was revealed to have only two or three bulletholes in the target.

But the only thing that had Aaron's full attention was the bullets themselves - his Fire Elemental power allowed him to sense the faintest heat and energy signatures within twenty or so feet, but the igniting of gunpowder and rifle-bore semi-molten lead flying throgh the air at supersonic speed showed up to him like a row of suns going in and out of supernova.

It was like that high fever he had when he was 9, all over again.

***

Shooting ballons, Emvee realised the hard way, was not quite as simple as it seemed.

The slightest gust would move them out of his sights, which was something he should have expected - what he hadn't expected was the amount of work that they'd put into tricking them out. Balloons tied to each other flew erratically, thanks to the different masses of helium in them. Some had little swinging weights that made them kick around as they drifted. What really got EmVee's goat, though, was the fact that some of them were really giant balloon sculptures, and some of those weren't even twisted into airplanes.

That does it. I think I've shot down all the floating cows already...

"Rrawf!"

"Got it!" Emvee replied, taking the PWN-3D into a dive as two more targets appeared. Pulling the trigger on his flight stick caused the aircraft to spew two streams of bullets, getting the targets one after another before he pulled up again.

"Rrowwroww-rruff."

"A slight roll to the left and I could have hit both at once. Right, gotta remember that." What the hell am I saying? Emvee thought to himself. Is that the sort of thing they learn in gunners' academy?

"BARKBARKBARK!"

"Right!"

Emvee pulled up into a near vertical climb, pitching even further to turn the plane into a near-level if upside-down path - which put Snarl's treasured Red Baron target smack dab in his sights. At least there's no problems with our communicaiton here, thought Emvee as he shot a look at Rebis manning the controls below.

"All yours!"

"RROWRROWROOOO!!!"

Rebis punched a command on his side to release a missile on the plane's starboard wing, just as EmVee rolled it in the opposite direction, taking them away from the Red Baron target as the missile scored a direct hit.

"We got two more on our left!" Emvee yelled, spotting the last two balloons.

"Rrarrarrarrf!"

"Are you bloody kidding me?!" Emvee retorted.

***

"Five seconds left," said Kup_1 through a radio headset, lounging in the air-conditioned if somewhat clinical atmosphere of the control tower. It wasn't very ladylike to prop her feet on the radar screen, but she really didn't care. "You want Autobloke and the other techies to set those balloons up all over again?"

***

"Son of a-" EmVee bit his lip, the shot of pain helping him to concentrate. "All right, Rebis, we do it your way!"

With both hands on the stick and both feet pushing the opposite direction, Emvee rolled the plane towards the remaining targets, and making it oversteer deliberately to swing away from them again as Rebis flipped the last button cover, waiting for exactly two and two-fifths of a second before punching it...

...causing the PWN-3D's bomb bay to swing open, releasing two bombs that flew on nothing but centrifugal force, spinning out of control as they went straight into the targets, and exploded.

"AWWRIGHT! Rebis, you da dawg!!" Emvee cheered.

"Grrrruffruff."

"I can't do ghetto talk. Right. Sorry," said a quickly calmed Emvee, concentrating on the flight back to base as Rebis tried not to snigger.

[Predabot]

Rebis be da GHETTO!

[Aaron Hong]

Just a quick one...

***

"...Aaron? Aaron, you all right? It's midday, man..."

It was just then that Aaron realised he'd somehow dozed off, and he shook his head hard to get the fatigue out... then realised that it only made things worse as his throbbing brain thumped against the insides of his head. Oh hell, that's what it was... the rough gunpowder formula they threw together in 5 hours just for this shoot. It's like inhaling acid fumes...

"Oh good, he's up... this feels familiar... I mean, TEN-HUT!"

Tired Tracks' voice wasn't enough to bring Aaron back to the land of moving parts, but the loud STOMP of A Company as they all stood at attention helped a lot. Aaron's first reaction was to smooth out his hair, which was a waste of time anyway considering how immovable his hair was, as he climbed out of the truck and took in his surroundings.

"The brass sent word. We're going ahead with the night shoot, just to get the troops oriented with low-light conditions," said Leatherneck. "And they're sending Papa Snarl over to observe. Besty wants you in the Ivory Tower ASAP."

"I see... at ease, people," said Aaron, and the troops responded with a single coordinated STEP. "What's it about then?"

"He didn't say," said Leatherneck, "but he did send your ride."

Aaron looked over Leatherneck's shoulder, and saw the first few lanes of the firing range, where a couple of recruits from C Company had been saddled with the task of picking up expended shells. Upon realising that transportation to the Ivory Tower was not going to come out of the firing range, Aaron swept his glance to the right, past the range itself and towards the first training shed...

...where Obfleur waved from the window of a dusty Humvee.

***

The drive back into the city of TransFans proved to be a lot longer than Aaron had expected. The first leg of it, from the firing range to the main gate of Camp Vector Sigma, already took something like ten minutes of traversing ridiculously uneven dirt trails, to less uneven but just as ridiculous paved roads that wound back on themselves. Aaron wasn't the chatty sort, but long silences (barring engine noise and potholes) weren't really his thing either.

"So," he began, "they made you a driver, huh?"

Obfleur raised an eyebrow. "Uh... yeah."

Dammit, that was redundant. "That's good... not too complicated, I hear the hours are hell though..."

"I haven't had to do any overnight runs yet," Ob replied, "but Tired Tracks passed me a can of coffee back at the range, so I think I'm prepared for whatever Besty calls me up for."

"That's great," said Aaron. "He's a good kid, just has some questionable... hours..."

"...you didn't think I'd wind up doing this, did you?"

"...no."

Nobody said anything, as the humvee crossed teh river l33t.

"You know you can say anything in front of me, Aaron," said Ob. "Most people learn that early on from what I say in front of them."

Aaron didn't bother to stifle his chuckles, proving Obfleur's point. "All I had to go with was some comment at the last row of the routine order. I thought you were, y'know, being evasive about it..."

"EVASIVE MANEUVERS!!"

Obfleur pulled the Humvee into a drift, narrowly avoiding the hulking, furry form of Mecha as he tried to cross the road. Aaron, on the other hand, was regretting not carving the words FASTEN YOUR SEATBELD on his own fists.

"You all right, double-A?"

"Yeah, I'm f... fine," Aaron replied, wincing at the sting of his own lava blood receding from his hands as he gripped the dashboard and shotgun window. It's happening by reflex now... "Ob... that's precisely my point. You've been here longer than some of the mods, your experiences helped you to learn stuff like that brake-slide and then pull it off like Schumacher... I really, really figured you for a better job than this, Obfleur."

It took an incredible amount of self-control for Obfleur to maintain his usual ghastly smile. Aaron learned to see that a long time ago.

"For the record, Aaron Hong," said Obfleur, "taking this job was my own choice. You know me, I'm all talk, I'm no soldier... this whole stomping-into-battle thing, or whatever fancy armored vehicles you sit in, leraning how to use your automatic weapons and wires and stuff, just to..."

"...kill people?" said Aaron.

"...yeah," Obfleur replied.

Nobody said anything, as the ride smoothened out, due to the humvee entering the first highway into the city of TransFans.

"I'll tell you what my experiences taught me," said Aaron. "You know what they call the world's oldest profession... some call war the world's oldest crime. Nobody knows how violence between people really came about, some believe it all began when some semi-evolved primate raised a hog's thighbone and took it to the head of his fellow Homo Chavulus, probably over women... but way back then, violence had only one purpose. Never mind what your governments choose to gloss it over with, fighting has still does the exact same thing it's always done."

The humvee slowed a little as it entered Main Street and approached the Ivory Tower.

"We fight to stop the fight, Ob," said Aaron eventually. "The means is the end."

[Aaron Hong]

Security measures in the Ivory Tower had been overhauled yet again, as Aaron found out, only this time it wasn't on another drunken whim. Amnesia wasn't playing receptionist this time, as going through every door now required the use of one's dog tags as a key. As in, literally as a key. With the inserting and one-and-a-half twists.

By the time he reached the elevator doors, Aaron had figured out that it made the process a lot easier if he took the dog tags off his neck before doing that. Ignoring the funny bleeps as the elevator recognised his dog tags, he stood back and waited...

...and got a bit of a shock as the elevator went DOWN.

Aaron closed his eyes for a bit, using his Fire Elemental to see everything as heat signatures, and it worked - the blower that ventilated the elevator gave out a distinct, orange heat that spread about halfway down the elevator walls, while more powerful blowers lined the elevator shaft, illuminating some sixteen storeys in a dull red. There were people walking around, orange-yellow blobs that milled around aimlessly. What really got Aaron's attention was the rest of the building, the masonry and foundations pulsating in a solid but dull red, and forming the distinct shape of an upside-down tower about fifty feet wide and tapering as he descended.

The Ruby Tower. How could I forget.

Aaron decided to quit seeing through the walls and just wait till the elevator stopped, which fortunately didn't take that long. The doors slid open, revealing a floor paved in ruby and ivory, shiny ivory walls with double coffered wainscoting in redwood (Aaron cursed his incessantly long hours on Sims 2) and a massive redwood table that was presumably Best First's own workstation...

...all of which ceased to matter as a flying 5-foot mass of female flesh in pink fatigues and F-cups approached Aaron at head level and hammered him into the elevator again. Annie's long hours of practicing Sheba's signature tackle hug, judging from the shudder through the tower that followed, had not gone to waste.

"Okarinasai, Aaarooo-chan!"

Aaron had to hold up his head as he stood, with his hands over his ears lest his brains come dripping out of them. Annie was already standing, giving Aaron a once-over - most people would have noticed how her new dog tags were held firmly in her cleavage, but Aaron also noticed how they somehow found an army uniform in her size, with the pink specks on the standard Desert Storm pattern to boot. After a few more seconds, Aaron also noticed Best First, looking concerned as he stood over them (because despite all the hype, Aaron was really one of the shortest TransFans on the Board thanks to the predominant Caucasian presence, and that wasn't about to change...)

"Besty... aargh... she put you up to this didn't she?"

All BF could do at this point was raise his arms a little and give a half-hearted "Surprise?"

"Bestydono is such a big joker sometimes isn't he?" said Annie. "When I first came in, he told me not to go to the army camp right away, just to come here and find a place to hide until you showed up. Look, he's still wearing that stupid box on his head just so you don't recognise him..."

Besty immediately pulled said box off his head, chucked it to a corner, and pretended it never existed.

"Seriously though," said BF at last, "when I assigned Dylan to head the medical corps, he started having trouble about two days in. He wasn't able to manage the medical center properly because of all the malingering runts coming in, trying to skive off training. Short of a blanket-banning, the best way to fix it was to get professional help."

"But Annie's a qualified nurse at the most, not an actual doctor," Aaron protested.

"Think of it this way," said Best First, taking Aaron by the shoulder and leading him to a nearby window (even though they were underground and there wasn't jack all to see except mre cavern.) "I've got you and Snarl both assigned to be Regimental Sergeant Major, remember? It helps take a load off the Colonels and Captains so they can better manage our army. Same thing here. Only Annie's nursing experience seems to exceed your military experience by about ten years, doesn't it?"

"Then where's Snarlos' military experience come from?" Aaron asked.

"Ever been in a London pub on Friday night?"

Aaron wasn't really sure what to make of that, having sworn off alcohol a long time ago. Fortunately there was another pressing matter on his mind to provide convenient distraction. "Annie... how exactly did you know..."

"One of the TransFans sort of offhandedly told the mods how to send a high priority message on your ranger.net account," Annie explained. "All signs seem to indicate Tired Tracks. That aside, I was at home when the alarm went off, and that's how I found out..."

What signs, coffee stains on the email? "Yes, but more importantly," said Aaron, taking great care to enunciate properly, "who is watching the kids?"

***

"Now, I want you all to pay close attention," said Nick Hong, Aaron's infamous rebel brother, to the captive audience of Christian, Christina, Angel, Sam, and the increasingly hyper Kitty, "because this maneuver is a little difficult to catch the first time. All right, here goes..."

With a sudden jerk of his hands, two black plastic items appeared from out of Nick's leather sleeves and in his hands, where he caught them by pinching the thick silver edges on their backs - the rebound from the jerk was used to swing the weapons open, revealing two triggers and two slender barrels on the backs of two very deadly three-inch blades.

Nick twirled the folding gunblades in his hands, drawing a wave of 'oooooh's from the audience.

"The classic Spyder-drop, just one of several ways in which a knife can be quickly deployed in an emergency," Nick explained. "Some knives have a claw in the base of the blade that hooks onto the edge of your pocket, making the blade fold out as you draw the knife, but gunblades are a different case altogether. The firing mechanism make it very hard to make the blade fold, never mind the fancy stuff."

Angel and Sam stood up and flung two apples at Nick - not because he was really that bad at winning the crowd, but because he'd told them several times that it was all right. Kids needed a fun uncle to offset the disciplinarian dad, he reckoned, never mind that his idea of 'fun' was so twisted it made the soccer moms faint...

...as his hands moved with lightning speed, slicing the apples in halves, which the twins caught and started munching on.

And to add to all that, Kitty flung another apple clear out of the balcony, whereupon Nick raised his left hand, sighted, and fired, getting the apple perfectly.

"Now," said Nick, concealing the weapons just as fast as they'd appeared, "who wants to se Uncle Nick gut the bastard that beat him to the last available gas pump?"

"YAAAY!!"

***

Aaron's lava blood was strangely feeling a lot cooler now, with the above image having fully unfolded in his head.

"There's another thing, Aaron," said Best First, directing Aaron and Annie to a couple of armchairs he kept around for guests. "The firing practice seems to be coming along swimmingly, despite the projected margin of error and all possibilities taken in; it was from viewing the actual practice, in fact, when we agreed that the only time a shooting accident could occur was if IronHide was within a mile of the firing range. With that out of the way, we've decided to rush the training and move on to the next step..."

***

"Field Camp?" said Computron, as he sat with Snarlos, Eline and Prowl Pants at the impromptu round table session held around his own desk.

"Yes, it's time we made use of all that bloody wilderness we've got surrounding the camp," said Papa Snarl. "People at TFArchive are saying that our recruits are far too comfortable in camp, never mind that case with Predabot - five days and nights out in the wild ought to put the fear of God in 'em."

"Make it a week, us officers could use some leftover fear," Prowl Pants chipped in.

"Wait! WAIT! Everybody!" said Eline out loud. "Aren't you all acting rather hastily about this? We haven't even discussed what they'll be doing out there that'll last a week! You're only plastering one side of the dyke!"

Three left eyebrows began to raise slowly, as they all looked at Eline.

"A lot of it is pretty straightforward really, at least if we base it on the curriculum Aaron gave us. It should be in the prospectus thingy I've printed out for you all," said Snarlos, indicating the folders on the table. Everyone took a copy and started flipping.

"Oh, I like this. Section movements, with rifles pointing around and everything," said Prowl Pants.

"That chapter includes the hand signals that you always see them use to communicate silently, in Platoon and whatever," said Snarlos, while thinking Don't we have radio headsets now? Although I could think of a few hand signals I could add...

"Pitching tents seems to come first for some reason," Eline commented. Three right eyebrows raised slowly in her direction.

"Camouflage," Computron noted. "This is where they cover their helmets in grass, isn't it?"

"Does this mean Sheba will follow them out there?" Prowl Pants asked. "I don't think we should make Nebbie cook for them in the field, she's new and all..."

"Haven't you been paying attention?" said Snarlos. "It's field camp! Everything they eat is coming out of a foil bag or a can, and if there's any cooking going on out there they'll be doing it themselves!"

"Ohh..." said PP at last, followed by eight seconds of silence, and finally finishing with "ohhh boy. Heh."

"Yes, I can see where that would be a problem," said Snarlos, while (again) thinking If only you knew what Besty really wanted to do for this camp...

***

Annie left the office via the security elevator, leaving Aaron and Best First alone in his office. Despite the obvious allegations behind that last sentence, BF and Aaron were simply standing at opposite ends of that office window, in the manner that men usually do when they are about to execute a very non-military variation of the term 'dropping the bomb'.

"TFArchive has been printing some fairly disturbing news of us, Aaron," BF explained. "Just the other day they had a report about our recruits leading far too pampered a life in camp, complete with pictures of Southern cuisine. It's as if they're egging us on to put the recruits through field camp soon, just so they can have dibs on the news when we do...."

"Just how did this business wih the TFArchive start, anyway?" Aaron asked.

"It was back when Omega Supreme was in charge," BF explained. "He'd ordered us to send the first TransFan troops into a then-Carly-occupied TFArchive, to break the trolls' hold on the place - some still think TransFans was really after their bandwidth - but the truth is, we didn't do a good enough job of cleaning up when that war was over. The few TFArchive members in our standing garrison were consumed in the aftermath. We practically handed TFArchive to Brendocon."

Aaron's brows narrowed reflexively, as it started to sound vaguely familiar.

"Brendocon's regime was based pretty much on Brendocon," Besty carried on. "Everyone's avatar had to be in the exact same dimensions. Only the British members were allowed to have sigs. N00bs weren't allowed to post until after three weeks. And there were your occasional elections with Brend being unanimously voted back into power every time," he added, with a very British 'hmph' to top it off.

"What about the BrendoMinicons?" Aaron asked. "I've been suspicious about those for some time, their level of intelligence is nowhere near Brendocon's regular alt-IDs..."

"We believe they are a splinter cell of terrorists, with values conveniently similar to the Brendocon regime," said BF. "Apparently they answer to a certain black Terradive, who once openly announced a huge PayPal reward for every ganked TransFan IP brought to him."

"...just the IP?"

"There was one point when Brend took down the Optimus and Megatron in the TFArchive banner," Best First continued, "but that was revealed to be a gag staged by some script kiddie, so it all blew over rather quick..."

"I think I've had enough history lesson for one day, thanks," said Aaron. "You still haven't told me why I'm really here."

Best First went to his desk, opened a drawer, and took out a large rolled document.

"We need someone to infiltrate the TFArchive and bring something back," he explained. "An incriminating IP, perhaps. Anything we can use to turn the tables..."

"And I'm the man for the job because...?"

"Being on several message boards and no small number of Japanese porn sites, your IP address has been rendered virtually nondescript," said Besty. "Even if you were detected, they'd never be able to log your IP and follow it back to you..."

"You mean they won't be able to follow it back to you."

Besty sighed. "I guess I deserve that... I won't bother asking about your commitment to TransFans or repeating how your skills make you the best man likely to come back out of there, I'll just ask you one final time - are you in or are you out?"

Aaron wasn't even sure if he should be here to begin with. These issues with TFArchive were never his problem to begin with, and yet for all the time he'd been here, be'd been drawn into one fight after another, usually involving some aggressor against the Board itself. It was just a coincidence that the aggresson in each case was somehow TFArchive-related, wasn't it...?

"One day your children will be old enough to post, Aaron," said BF. "They'll be drawn to this place just because it was your first Board, and no doubt these people will welcome them with open arms... as long as they still have that choice..."

Aaron seemed to find that vaguely familiar as well. "All right then... I'm in."

"Good to hear that, soldier."

Besty started unrolling that document he'd been carrying - it was a meticulous satellite photo of what appeared to be teh river l33t, with what appeared to be the camp compound deep in the flora on one side, and a mile of swampland at the far south. Someone had used a highlighter to indicate all the drivable roads, but it was the blue highlighter that seemed to cut across the landscape with no regard for terrain that had Aaron's attention.

"During construction of Camp Vector Sigma, we've had to use concrete slabs to reinforce every bend in teh river l33t to prevent meandering," Besty explained, "and this was when we found an ancient sewer system that spilled into the river. The sewers of TransFans as you know come nowhere near that area, and we've discovered after exploring the area that these sewers, in fact, lead to the TFArchive."

"So I'll be entering through there then," Aaron surmised. "It looks like a five-day trek on foot..."

"Oh, I've got the ulitmate prime fan to design a special motorcycle that you will use to go through the sewers," BF added. "It's got a specially shielded engine to cut down on sound and heat signals, and the tyres will grip the road through two inches of scum..."

You've thought this out pretty thoroughly, haven't you, thought Aaron.

"...you should get there in one day," BF continued, as he pulled out a second satellite picture to lay over the first one, "reaching this specific sewer tunnel that runs directly under Main Street, TFArchive. This thingy over here is the Ebony Tower, see that?"

Aaron nodded along, not really at hearing all the details about the TFArchive that BF was explaining to him, down to where he could grab a bite and where the cleanest bathrooms were, but because something else was becoming clearer to him now. It wasn't the fact that the TFArchive roads bore an odd sort of similarity to TransFans itself, it was the fact that the roads, the buildings, even said cleanest bathrooms were showing up this clearly at all.

"...I've changed my mind," said Aaron at last.

"I... beg your pardon?"

"It doesn't matter what my IP looks like to them at all, does it? They won't even bother about all that. All they're looking for is an excuse," said Aaron, the facts still connecting and combining in his head to form a gestalt that Hasbro most likely wouldn't put out in a million years.

"What are you talking about, man?" asked Best First. You could put that box back on his head and it wouldn't hide his intentions any better.

"These photos were taken from your orbital laser, Best First," said Aaron. "Rather than answer Brend's claims about your level of military power, you've chosen instead to beef them up even further. You're organising combat aircraft practice half a mile from their border. You're just giving them what they want, mister First."

"What they want is the total and utter subjugation of each and every TransFan, mister Hong," Best First replied. "Or possibly obscene sexual favours, we've never been too clear on that... Look, they've been publishing our pictures and our stories in media that's been circulating all over TFArchive. Photos of our combat aircraft are in their papers. Metal Vendetta on page 1 and Michelle Marsh on Page 3, what does that say about us?!"

"Michelle who?!"

Best First hid his face in his hand for a couple of seconds, waiting for his head to get back on straight. Running a military when your only qualification is running a messageboard can do that to people, and Omega Supreme's abrupt departure had left Besty with a lot on his plate. Sure he had a dedicated staff (though what it was they were dedicated to was another matter) to help him along, but the truth was that he'd spread himself way too thin over this sudden military business. And to think it had been his idea...

"Google it or something," said Besty at last. "Take a little downtime while you're at it. You're dismissed."

Aaron smiled, glad to see things were back to relatively-normal. "All right then... I guess..."

"I'm sure Ikijigoku will find a use for that bike," BF added. "Don't let me keep you."

[Laser Rod Optimus Prime]

Metal Vendetta on page 1 and Michelle Marsh on Page 3, what does that say about us?!"

"Michelle who?!"

Best First hid his face in his hand for a couple of seconds, waiting for his head to get back on straight. Running a military when your only qualification is running a messageboard can do that to people, and Omega Supreme's abrupt departure had left Besty with a lot on his plate. Sure he had a dedicated staff (though what it was they were dedicated to was another matter) to help him along, but the truth was that he'd spread himself way too thin over this sudden military business. And to think it had been his idea...

"Google it or something,"

More fun than google "carbunkle."

[Aaron Hong]

Just a quick 'un.

***

EmVee and Rebis had finally reached the same airstrip they took off from, and Rebis settled the landing clearance while EmVee concentrated on the actual landing maneuver. For some reason the trip back felt longer than the trip there, and this was most likely due to the fact that EmVee couldn't wait to take in the adulation for a successful flight and weapons test.

What he got instead was an over-eager pit crew that ratcheted his canopy open, escorted him away from the PWN-3D and got on all fours to check every inch of the aircraft. Rebis just watched them with one rising eyebrow as Kup_1, who'd been in that air-conditioned office the whole time, strutted onto the landing strip looking fresh and mildly desirable, while EmVee, sweaty from the PWN-3D cockpit, looked back at her with no small amount of discontent.

"Those were some interesting maneuvers you pulled back there, pilot," said Kup_1.

"When you've had as much experience as me in the air, luv, you'll find that a lot of things come naturally to you," said EmVee. "You're looking at a gold card-bearing member of the Mile-High Club here." Rebis sniggered upon hearing this.

"I suppose some of those maneuvers involved leaving the bomb bay door wide open?" Kup_1 asked. EmVee's expression changed as he slowly realised what she was talking about... and moved a hand surrepitiously to check his fly.

"Not that, sir," said autobloke. "That final move you pulled, involving flinging the bombs out through centrifugal force. The doors weren't intended to take that kind of G-force strain while swinging open and unsecured."

"...the what?"

"Right this way, sir," said autobloke, leading EmVee back to the PWN-3D and underneath the massive, shiny fuselage. "There, see that?"

Emvee went pale as the truth finally hit him. A gaping hole in the belly of the aircraft glared back at him, with snapped hinges and pistons dangling down like the innards of a mechanical animal - an unsettling sight as it was, even before he figured out what it meant.

"You not only cost TransFans five million in PayPal credits per door, but doing this so close to the border means that the doors may have flown into TFArchive," said Kup_1. "I haven't read the paperwork but I know this is a breach of treaty of some kind."

"...oh bugger," said EmVee. Rebis immediately started sniffing for the scent. "Forget it, Ross," said EmVee, holding Rebis by the collar to restrain him. "By now it'll have changed hands three times in the TFArchive black market."

"Not if we find it first," said Kup_1, pulling out a walkie-talkie.

"You can call in the Special Forces to do this?" Emvee asked.

"No," said Kup_1 in resigned tones, "but I know someone who does."

[Aaron Hong]

For all that business about TransFans being represented as a city, nobody really stopped to take a good long look at just how much like a real city it was. There weren't any proper suburbs outside the city limits, for one thing, everything just cut from buildings to wasteland at a certain point, with nothing but signs and traffic lights to dress up the exits to the information superhighway. Of course teh river l33t itself plied through a third of the city, where the pollution had it coming out brown on the other end. Some believed that this meant Impactor Returns was doing too good a job, since it indicated how much waste he'd been cleaning out of the commodes of TransFans...

...but back to the point. A lot of TransFans seemed to be business buildings, despite the lack of actual businesses, and only a third of them were intended for residence. Aaron Hong currently sat at a desk in a room in one of these buildings, and a particularly large one at that (both the building and the room). Someone had obviously fed the idea of warehouse apartments to Best First.

Annie wrapped her arms around Aaron from behind. "Is this really necessary?" she asked.

"What?" he asked back.

"This," said Annie sternly, pulling Aaron's meticulous drawings off the table. "Are you seriously going to build a new gunblade every blinking time you come in here?"

"I'm just refining these designs for Nick," said Aaron. "Ever since I perfected the folding gunblade, he thinks I'm on a roll and wants one for every purpose - home, office, formal parties, those Tony Robbins events..."

"Y'know what, forget all that," said Annie, in a much softer tone of voice now, as her arms tightened a little. "You know what's really keeping me up right now?"

Aaron stopped drawing and thought hard, but it didn't come to him. He shrugged.

"The fact that leaving that rabid knife fanatic you call a brother alone with our children doesn't worry me as much as Best First giving you a mission like this," said Annie. "You're really going through with this?"

Aaron nodded. "It'll be a good look at how the other half lives. You know how TransFans prides itself on its unique propaganda network. I don't even have to bring back something for Besty, I'll just make something up and he'll get somebody else on the horn..."

"That's unethical, you know," said Annie. "I thought you knew how armies worked..."

"No, that's merely dishonest. Everything about this war is unethical," said Aaron. "They're training the solders in weapons too early. Someone's bound to get triggerhappy, and not from a well-timed eBay snipe. I mean god crappit, someone already did..."

"Yes, I read about that," said Annie. "You say this boy Predabot managed to re-register all right?"

"Not all right," Aaron replied. "The firewalls in his school network are making it even harder to investigate this mess for some reason..." He stopped for a second to look at the clock. "Good god, nobody told me it got late in Boardspace..."

"Let's get some sleep already," Annie yawned. "I gotta make sure I'm dozed off before your snoring begins..."

I doubt the kids out there even have the luxury of snoring, thought Aaron to himself, as he spent a little while staring out the window, beyond the city limits, in the rough direction of Camp Vector Sigma...

***

Where Predabot sat beside his bed with an armful and a half of green nylon, leather and Kevlar, trying to make snese of everything. He had made the mistake of being distracted as quartermaster Hound explained what personal equipment they were getting and what they were for.

"Need any help?" asked Laser Rod Optimus Prime - until shaxper suddenly grabbed his arm and pulled him back.

"You going about this all wrong, dude," said shax. "We're supposed to be soldiers, remember?"

"...and?" LROP asked.

"Which means that even with that bulwark about caramaderie and team spirit, we can only rely on each other to a certain degree," said shaxper. "We're the most expendable arm of the military - there is no way in hell we can be around for each other all the time. You should be teaching him to fend for himself. Geddit?"

LROP nodded as he took this in.

"Here, Pred, look at this," said shax to Predabot, reaching for the large door of his locker and swinging it open. "See, this diagram shows you where every piece of your equipment has to go during standby..."

"Yes, but what's it got to do with..."

"Every piece of equipment," said shaxper in stronger tones. "Like the stuff you're rummaging through right now. Take your time, there's no rush," he added, with a pat on Pred's shoulder for good measure, while adding inwardly We only got ten minutes till they turn out the lights anyhow...

"Okay, thanks," said Predabot, looking a lot happier as he returned to rummaging through his stuff, albeit in a more controlled manner. About five more recruits were returning to the bunk after brushing their teeth, and all of them had to tread carefully over the streewn mess at Pred's feet, as he dug up an unmistakable item from the pile. Only one piece of army equipment had to be made from a foot-wide Kevlar dome and an array of straps and thick sponge pads traversing the interior.

"This one's..." Pred looked at the diagram. "It's the..."

"It's the cup. You wear it over the Ericsson family ornaments," said Shanti with a wicked giggle.

"That's not funny, man," said Tired Tracks, but it wasn't enough to cull the spreading laughter. Predabot was usually oblivious to that anyway, and turned the helmet around a few times, working out how it went on.

"Okay, this seems to be it... wait a minute, where are the eyeholes?"

[Aaron Hong]

Rank and designation for Amnesia confirmed, actual appearance might have to wait a bit...

***

Predabot might have found some comfort in the fact that even the officers at the level most people dismiss as 'the brass' had as much trouble getting things done before nightfall as he did... unless nightfall itself was a deciding factor.

Some assignments simply had to be carried out at night, like Ikijigoku's trainng exercises for his Specialised Warfare Division. Obfleur was lucky in a way, leaving the outfit before they moved on from the daytime training missions to the ones that were carried out in pitch darkness at something like 12 am, possibly ending at 3. To be fair, the recruits that were condemned to wind up as mere infantry would be doing stuff like this eventually, but Iki's Onigumi, as they affectionately called themselves, were expected to be masters at it.

Anyone who witnessed the current training exercise (assuming they were allowed to live after doing so) would have understood the reasoning behind Iki's push to have Tired Tracks in his unit. The five Legion copies assigned to Iki's sqadron were all nodding off in CGI-precise rhythm, and Ikijigoku had had to go "fssst" through his teeth like a snake to wake them on several occasions.

"...sorry, sir," said the lead Legion. He wore one of those extra-porous scarves around his shoulders and through his lapels, a scarf that bore yellow tips in the same tones as the yellow pattern on his helmet. It was the only way to tell them apart, especially when Iki had to wear the same radio headset cum night-vision device as all his soldiers - a thing that covered more than half his face, and made his eyes glow green.

"Gamma 5's taking too long," Iki murmured. "Security people should be changing shifts by now, unless he plans on staying inside the whole time, he'll be seen..."

By 'security' Iki didn't mean actual TransFan security, of course, just a couple of webbots wheeling around one of the abandoned warehouses, their target for this training mission. And 'wheeling' meant that whoever programmed the webbots hadn't been very thorough with it, giving each bot a green light on their heads to indicate their current mood or something, and shopping-cart wheels for propulsion.

And not very good wheels either, judging from the way one bot was letting out a very annoying clattering sound as it moved. To think they could afford Bluetooth technology for the SpecWarriors' headsets...

"Bravo 6 to Gamma 6, come in," said a buzzy voice in Ikijigoku's comm unit. It sounded like Legion, of course.

"Gamma 6, go ahead," Iki replied.

"Bravo 6 - The second guard looks... umm... stressed. The clattering one. I think he's about to crack, over."

Ikijigoku blinked in disbelief upon hearing this, then decided to peer out of his hiding place anyway. His entire squad was ducked behind an oil tanker truck, and the gap between truck and trailer gave Iki a good view of the clattering webbot - it was rolling along unsteadily, with one of its four wheels rotating madly and clattering out of control as it moved.

God crappit, thought Iki. Screw the mission, that bot will raise the alarm all by itself. This whole exercise is a disaster waiting to happen.

"Just take it as the security guard tanking out on a pint of Jack Daniels' or something," said saysadie, monitoring the exercise with CCTV in an air-conditioned office. "Aren't you boys supposed to be ready for anything?"

"You gimme a pint of Jack Daniels' too, and we'll work something out," said a third voice over the radio.

"...which Legion was that?" saysadie asked.

Ikijigoku sighed. "The original."

"Sir! It's..."

Iki didn't bother to hear the rest of what Gamma 2 was saying. Seeing the clattering webbot sway back and forth, after hitting a chunk of gravel on the road, gave Iki a good enogh idea of what would happen. Despite the lackluster webbot technology, the folks behind the training area had ensured that any suspicious sounds would raise the alert level, to the extent of sending out even more security webbots or simply declaring the mission a failure on the spot.

"Strafefox!"

"Way ahead of you!" Strafefox replied, throwing out radio protocol as he leaped into action, appearing out from a seemingly solid wall and lunging on the falling security webbot with a knife in one hand...

Catching the webbot before it hit the asphalt, and using his knife to tear into where its neck ought to be.

The bot's green light fizzled out.

"Good work, Fox," said Iki, heaving a sigh of relief as he watched Strafefox deal with the 'body'... and suddenly, Iki felt his stress returning to him. "Just... one other thing..."

"Yeah?"

"...Could you find a less... suggestive way of dragging the bugger?"

***

After arranging all his stuff, Predabot still couldn't get to sleep. He took a shower and wandered around the corridors a bit, the remembered to put the shower back before checking out the upper stairwell, which he'd never had a look at before, since none of their activities involved that part of the building.

It turned out that the entire top floor was occupied by the sergeants. The rooms were the same size as the regular bunks, though the ceiling seemed a bit lower, but the biggest difference was that each room had just a handful of people. No need for bunk beds at all. Someone even had a DVD player and TV sitting in a corner, and the sonorous snores of one SGT Leatherneck echoing through the hallway provided mild deterrent for any intruders.

It hadn't worked on Predabot, only because he had no idea what that sound was anyway. At the same time, his attention was fully captured by yet another thing he'd never seen before - the stairs, ending in a nice, roomy stair landing, with nothing really special apart from a ladder bolted into the wall, leading to a roof access panel. An unbolted, unlocked, roof access panel.

The temptation was overwhelming.

[Predabot]

Let's 'ave a lookee up there.

[Legion]

"You gimme a pint of Jack Daniels' too, and we'll work something out,"

unfortunately, so very true!

[Aaron Hong]

IT'S ALLIIIIIIIVE!!... AGAIN!!

***

The roof panel lifted by a few inches as Predabot peered out from underneath. He hadn't had any expectations for what he would see up there, and so the expanse of bare concrete with brass pipes running along the edges didn't really give him a huge surprise. Neither did the lightning rod extending from the far corner, for that matter.

It was the view that gave Predabot pause... the buildings of the camp complex, bathed in just enough moonlight to turn the otherwise dismal scene into a misty, Gothic but still dismal scene. The few lights that were still on came from corridors and hallways, for security reasons of course, and the few sounds he could here were pretty much dominated by a certain particularly loud cicada, that cycled from slow chirping to blindingly fast every minute or so...

"I see you've stumbled across one of their best-kept secrets. Good for you."

Predabot turned around slowly, even though this was a voice he was already famliar with. "Ishin," he said at last. "Wow, do you always come here?"

Ishin no Ookami was standing on one of the water tanks, holding something very long and curved in his left arm. "As far as I can tell, I'm the only one," he replied. "I'm starting to see just why, though... shimatta! Get down!!"

Predabot didn't know whether to get down like Ishin said, or turn and see where that hideous screeching above his head was really coming from - he went completely still from the fright as Ishin leaped off the water tank, his right hand reaching for that thing he carried, and pulling out a silver wave of blinding light at an incredible speed...

By the time Predabot regained control, there was a five-foot crow sliced in half at his feet, as Ishin no Ookami sheathed the massive samurai sword he carried with him.

"...is that thing... yours?" Predabot stammered.

"You mean Masamune?" asked Ishin, indicating his oversized weapon. "Yes, it's mine. You'd be surprised at what some of these people have sneaked into this place over the years - you saw that Tired Tracks guy with all his cans of coffee, haven't you?"

Predabot nodded.

"And now I hear that Aaron Hong somehow brought his own firearm into TransFans," Ishin added. "Apparently he's one of the few who's been given that rather interesting privilege, even before they turned TransFans into Camp TransFans..."

"But doesn't everyone get that option anyway?" Predabot asked.

Ishin laughed to himself. 'I guess we do," he said, "I imagine the ability to deal death is often taken quite lightly in Boardspace, where the most that happens is that you lose your IP. Did you know guns have always been forbidden in Singapore?"

Predabot shook his head, unsure of where this was about to lead.

"It's a law left over from the time Singapore was a British colony, funny thing was, the British also left a pile of firearms and war monuments, since they got up and left during World War II. Do you know why they did that?"

Predabot shook his head again.

"The Imperial Japan Army, that's why," Ishin explained. "Storming throughout southeast Asia on a crusade to claim it all for their own, none of the Allies expected anything like it - they each had their own theaters of war to worry about, and the British decided right then to cut their losses and leave Asia to the Japanese."

"Whoa there, General Best First wouldn't want that kind of talk around here," Predabot warned.

"I take it you haven't heard some of the discussions that go on here," said Ishin. "Japan's in a very different light now, what with them setting up Takara and all, but hardly anyone here knows where Singapore is even located, do they?"

"I do. Southernmost tip of the Asian continent, surrounded..."

"That's beside the point," said Ishin with one hand raised, as if he hadn't heard a thing. "The point is... I'd be less concerned about the type of weapons that make their way in here, us being an army and all, and a lot more concerned about the fact that Aaron Hong is weilding one of them in a conveniently British-dominated message board."

Predabot took some time to mull over this. True, only two of the six mods actually were British, but there were all those senior officers like Rebis and Metal Vendetta - and Aaron Hong always did strike thim as the type who'd take a grudge as far as it would go before the wheels came off, and then heft it on his shoulders and keep going.

"...nah, he wouldn't," said Predabot eventually. "This is like the UN of message boards we got here, I mean I'm from Sweden and Captain Dylan's from Holland and Tracks said he's from this tropical country called Florida or something, and spiderfrommars... umm..."

Ishin no Ookami looked on aghast as Predabot still couldn't hit upon the most likely homeworld of this curious eight-limbed recruit, even though it was part of his handle. He heaved a sigh, and carried on.

"You don't want to be here by the time the sun comes up," Ishin warned. "Leatherneck's probably the type who'll walk up to your bed and whack you in the unmentionables with a stick if you're asleep. Heck, some of the work starts even before sun-up. Don't forget where we are now. Look at that over there."

Predabot followed Ishin's gaze as he pointed to the edge of the roof, and approached it - and suddenly Ishin grabbed his shoulders and shoved him to the asbestos. He couldn't figure out why. He couldn't ask why either, not with a Proud Wolfpaw over his mouth.

***

Down at ground level was a truck pulling up to the smallest of the buildings, in reverse, and another truck already parked there, whilst quartermaster Hound supervised the unloading of said truck by a handful of trolls. One of the new disciplinary actions undertaken in the now militarised TransFans was RP - not restriction of privileges, but Reduction of Posting, where the offender was only allowed two posts a day pending admin approval. Some of these were newly-discarded alt-IDs after the real perpetrators had escaped sentencing, but at least they were good for manual labor.

"...all right, what the hell are these over here?" said Hound as he approached a stack of crates bound in black duct tape as opposed to the usual brown.

"Just something to add to the workload," Dark Link complained. "Can you believe they went and put all the prototypes for army equipment through the complete process? 500 items of everything, even the originally rejected crap. Boots. Uniforms. Helmets and sh-t. And who's gotta load them and carry them and count them one by one?"

"Not me, thankfully," said Hound, already cracking a case open and pulling out a large shoebox. Cracking that open revealed a pair of shiny black boots that had nylon panels replacing the leather above the arch and behind the heel for greater flexibility. "This one's kinda nice, I wonder why the troops didn't get this."

"Probably because the rounded, knobbled soles make the whole thing look like soccer shoes," said Dark Link. "You can tell Snarlos designed those..."

"If Snarlos designed anything in these crates, it'll come with an adult warning," said Hound. "And did I say I needed your opinion? Back to work, peon!"

Dark Link suddenly went all hunched and defensive, hobbling away with coughs and sneers at Hound's sudden exertion of authority.

***

"Wow, that's brutal," Predabot whispered, before realising that Ishin wasn't covering his mouth anymore.

"The military usually is, kid," said Ishin. "One wrong step and you'll end up like those trolls, branded for life. Come to think of it, things are kind of like that already, aren't they?"

Predabot went quiet as the few memories he did retain came back to him... Leatherneck had caught him trying to wear his helmet over the Ericsson family jewels, and he had to clean out every item in his inventory, carry his cupboard across the parade square and await inspection from Prowl Pants. He dreaded to think of what would happen if Aaron Hong had gotten wind of that.

"With field camp coming up, we can't be too careful," Ishin warned. "They're gearing up for the real military experience this time. A whole blinkin' week out in the wild, sleeping under a tent, haing to give some password each time you cross the ropes surrounding base camp, the whole kit and caboodle. You think you're ready for that?"

Predabot didn't know what to think.

"None of these runts are," Ishin sighed. "They're rushing the training too fast... something's going down. I can sense it."

[Predabot]

Yes... something might be going down.. Ishin.

[Aaron Hong]

*adds cornstarch to the drama, thickening it*

***

There were jobs that had to be done at night, just as there were jobs that overran into it.

The logistical nightmare that was Hound's unexplained consignment of army gear was nothing compared to that other nightmare on Best First's desk - the mountains of reports he didn't dare to delegate to someone else to go over. After one inspection of the artillery went horribly wrong when IronHide took one of the cannons to hunt gamefowl, Besty had to order that all the maximum clearance paperwork go through his desk first, which he figured was the whole point of it anyway...

...and at last, upon reaching the brown envelope with the address in official-looking font, Besty realised that sometimes misery didn't need company.

"Enter," said BF when his door was knocked, and in came regimental sergeant major Papa Snarl. "Wait a minute... none of the generals were available?"

"You shoulda looked at the clock at some point, mate," Snarlos answered, raising a hand to tap upon said wall clock for emphasis. "The only unit training right now is the Black Ops unit or whatever Iki calls it now... Only-the-Lonely?"

"Onigumi," Besty corrected. "Look, never mind about that, look at this over here." Snarlos took a seat in front of Besty's desk, and both pored over the official-looking letter.

"Bloody hell," Snarlos cursed under breath.

"Yes, that's close to what I thought as well," Besty replied.

"Can't believe they'd go that far," Snarlos added. "I mean, we've never been at all-out war before this, but..."

"And what is your definition of 'all-out' war exactly, Snarlos?" Besty asked. Snarlos pondered over this for a bit.

"Well, we'd have one side making the first move obviously, wouldn't matter how big or how small it was; you wouldn't even need to assassinate someone to kickstart it, just push some existing tension to see how far it'll stretch..."

"And?" said Besty. "You're forgetting the one part of war that's the hardest to cover up."

Snarl worked it out. "The fighting."

Besty nodded. "So far any conflicts we've had were pretty much one-sided - when Brendocon first got his BrendoMiniCon army, he led the invasion, had all of TransFans under seige until we threw it all down one-to-one..."

"What about that time when we were still in high school?" Snarlos asked.

"Yeah, that was them busting in on our turf too wasn't it?" said Besty. "I guess we did too good a job covering it up, or the BrendoMiniCon invasion might have turned out differently,"

"You and yer anal-retentive attitude towards changing the course of history, eh?" Snarl didn't even bother to suppress a chuckle.

"But build one satellite laser and they accuse US of aggresive actions," Besty snapped. "Bloody hell, I don't even remember approving of that thing. Just thought it'd be handy to have around... and now, they've gone and reported that we're arming our TransFans in military weaponry. Look at all these points on this list."

Snarlos pored over the document again. "Artillery... jets... rifles... yep, that about covers it..."

"And it's not even all the TransFans," said Best First. "Just the regulars and all the n00bs, senior members don't really get to roll in the mud with rifles, they have it easy..."

"Whoa, wait a sec," said Snarlos. "This is the internet. Message boards are about as free an enterprise as you can get. Who the hell can they report it to?"

Best First heaved a sigh, and leaned back in his chair to look at the document again. Snarlos followed his eyes out of habit, but didn't see it until he leaned back as well, making the giant watermark that covered the entire sheet easier to view. A falcon of some sort, with a sword in its beak, its talons clutching a shield that resembled... a light blue house?...

"They reported us to HASBRO?!"

"In recent years Hasbro has been guarding its intellectual property with all the veracity of a militant state," Best First explained. "That unfortunate business at the Spacebridge should have taught us something... they won't spare the little man this time. And they're not about to have their mlitary might challenged by anything remotely similar..."

"How remotely similar?" Snarlos snapped. "They send out lawyers with big rainbow banners and Cease-and-Desists! All we have are recruits training to handle virtual weapons that... deliver hack scripts at a speed surpassing broadband... that could disable IPs and... and damage server data..."

Snarlos deflated slowly and visibly when the truth occurred to him. "All this because Brend reported us first."

"What do we have on him?" Besty replied. "No law against multiple alt-IDs or posting at one Board when you're admin at another. Nobody knows the law better than criminals, Snarlos."

Snarl nodded in response. "So what do we do about this?"

"They left us an ultimatum, at least," said Besty as he flipped through the document. "A partial disarming of either one of the three militant technologies we've developed for ourselves. I don't know why they left out the satellite laser, it's probably one of those small mercies we should all be thankful for. So, what it means is..."

"...remove the air corps?" asked Snarlos.

"Too extensive to decommission all those aircraft. Then there's compensating the pilots to think about," Besty replied.

"Remove the artillery cannons?"

"That'll leave us open to a direct attack."

"That leaves disarming the soldiers then," said Snarlos eventually.

"Out of the question," Besty snapped. "The recruits would be in an uproar. No more weapons revisions and repetetive cleaning drills. They'd be giddy with complacency. It'd get to their heads."

"Fine, I was just sayin'," said Snarl, backing off a bit. The two sat for a while and considered these options - it was probably routine for the lowest rung of the military ladder to get the shaft in these situations, but Besty and Snarl were working on just how said shaft would be given... sideways? With or without lube?

"...if we can't disarm," said Snarl slowly, "how... about... re-arm?"

Besty looked up. "Eh?"

"Design a new assault rifle that doesn't use bannunition," Snarl elaborated. "When I was a mere mite back at the workhouse, the big boys from the union would come **** around, see, and we'd bust out the catapults to end a scuffle quickly, and we'd load 'em with whatever **** we could pick from the ground. It'd get around their ultimatum and..."

"Are you suggesting we take a regiment of newly-trained riflemen and arm them with catapults?"

That naughty gleam returned at last to Snarl's eye. "I'm suggesting we leave that minor detail to the new weapons designer."

"Right," said Besty. "I'll draw up a work order and stamp Aaron's name all over it, and..."

"Aaron?"

Besty looked up from his workstation. "Problem?"

"You just sent him off when he turned down your last assignment, Paul," said Snarlos. "What makes you think he'll take up this one so soon? You can only angle him with his kids so many times..."

Besty took all this in, and lounged back again. "You just mentioned covering up that business with the couse of history, remember?"

"Aye?"

"Aaron and Annie have been affected in a way we can't cover up quite that well, lord help us if we somwhow need to," Besty began. "Spending a week as a teenager has made Aaron remember some of the things he was forced to leave behind before he got drafted into that Volunteer Corps..."

"Yes, that particular oxymoron has never failed to amuse me," Snarlos replied.

"He used to be quite the wild one," said Besty, now holding up a diagram of the PR1-M3 assault rifle and looking intently at it, "but another thing about him then... is that he was game for any weapon-related challenge."

[Aaron Hong]

KINGSIZED UPDATE AHOY!... arrr.

***

Let the camera rest for a moment on the PR1-M3 diagram, while we go over a few other background facts.

In order to keep the Transfans war machine humming away, Best First the taskmaster always made sure everyone earned their keep and pulled their own weight, no matter what arm of the military they were in. This was what made him consider the requests for Annie, Aaron's wife and erstwhile fifth (and sixth and seventh) wheel to his latest shenanigans, to be transferred to a department. Dylan fought like mad to get her attached to the Medical Corps, but it was under a very valid threat of indigestion that BF decided to place Annie with the cookhouse, on the condition that she be given command authority over Sheba and Nebbie.

The real reason for this was finally made known, as A Company sat in a roughly-assembled block on the bare concrete floor of one of the cheaper training sheds, abuzz with chatter - this was to be their first survival lesson, though why it wasn't being held a little further from civilisation had them bewildered. Everyone wore their tank tops and army pants with boots, the usual garb for informal lessons that weren't going to be supervised by a mod or admin.

"...way I see it, we'll need a few obvious skills to get through the first day out there," Shanti reasoned to his fellow recruits. "Setting up them tents, of course. Knots and so on. And digging deep holes..."

"What for?" asked Predabot. Everyone turned to look at him.

"Oh, not to worry, that'll be your special duty," said Shanti with a laugh, which eventually spread through the entire company. Predabot thought he heard someone say 'Impy' or something similar, but paid no further heed to it, choosing instead to sidle up to Tired Tracks and ask "Any idea what this'll be about then?"

"My judgement tells me that it'll be about getting food," Tracks replied. Way I see it, that's the most important survival skill of all. Food and water. I wonder what the heck we could get out there, though..."

Predabot spent a second or two looking into the wilderness past the wire fences. as if it would help his answer any. "I imagine if it's true about the giant hamsters, we'd have quite a bit of hunting on our hands..."

Tracks raised his eyebrows. "Giant... hamsters?"

"Yeah, the other time Sheba mentioned trying to hunt a giant hamster in the woods, remember?"

Tracks couldn't think of a better way to explain in. "That's Captain Mecha, Pred. One of the resident Dutch folk. They've assigned him to our company as Platoon Commander, it's just that his training had to be extended a little due to his unique... physiology."

Predabot nodded as he took all this in. "Why's that?"

Tracks gave up. "I imagine being able to store grenades in your cheeks has some effect on the standard procedures we're all used to..."

"TEN-HUT!"

A Company stood at attention in an instant. They were getting better at it now, it got harder to surprise them after a while - up until they saw who it was giving the lesson.

Strutting into the training shed was a diminutive figure clad in the standard Desert Storm fatigues - except the colors were wrong. The beige background was more off-white, and the specks were very, very pink.

"I was wondering when she'd show up," Tired Tracks mused to himself.

"Who? asked sprukner.

What Predabot said probably had no translation, even from Swedish, because it was more like "whhaaaaaaa...", because when all was said and done, there really was only a couple of things people ever noticed whenever Annie, her feminine endowments making up for the fact that she really was quite short, entered the scene.

And this time, Hound had made sure to get her a uniform that could be fully buttoned over them.

"Company..."

"Yamettekudasai!" ordered Annie as A Company went into mid-salute. "There is no need for that in Annie's house. You will see I am not wearing a rank today. I am not your officerne, I work for a livingdesu. And for this round I am working as one of your trainers, for your introductory survival lesson. However there is just one bit of protocol that you will observe during my lessons..."

Annie executed her traditional Japanese bow.

"Men shall bow at the hips, with their backs straight and arms to their sides. I will begin by saying Tadaima, and you will respond with Ookarinasai. Then the lesson may begin. Are we clear on that?"

For once it was a little difficult for A Company to answer right away. After Leatherneck's shouting sessions and Aaron's shouting sessions, it was quite hard for them to get used to this.

"At the end of each lesson I will sign off with Ittekimasu, and yo will be required to respond with Itterashai. Are we clear on that?"

A Company bowed in one perfectly synchronised movement - then some confusion arose when they realised they didn't really know what to say next.

"A simple Ryoukai will suffice," said Annie. "The traditional Hai you may have heard of before is really a more generalised form of Yes, which I will not expect to hear a lot in a military environment. Now, are we ready to begin?"

"HAI!" went the whole of A Company.

Not bad - theye've spotted the difference between an affirmative and a normal agreement, Annie thought to herself. I just hope they don't realise I'm just making all this up...

"Now, the lesson may begin," Annie announced. "Who can tell me the foremost priority of surviving in the wild?"

Murmurs spread through A Company as fifty different answers were surrepitiously juggled amongst them.

"Shelter?" asked Shanti.

"Squad formation during movement?" asked Tired Tracks.

"Loading and unloading the rifle within ten... seconds?" Predabot deflated slowly as he realised how far off the mark this was.

Annie looked back and forth for a bit. "All imortant in their own way, of course... your trainers have done their job well... but I am talking about something of the foremost importance, when you are required to survive in the wild for up to a month while trekking towards the enemy. I am talking about..."

She reached into her cleavage and pulled out a thick roll of paper nearly four feet long. Walking towards the whiteboard, she unrolled the paper partially - it turned out to be some ten or so sheets rolled together, secured at one end by a copper strip with a convenient hanging loop, which she secured at the top of the whiteboard, allowing the primitive lecture tool to unroll fully.

For the first time she could remember, the men were drooling at something other than her.

"...Food."

***

We look back for a moment at the PR1-M3 diagram.

Someone has drawn circles in red around the trigger and carriage return assembly, arguably the heart of the weapon. A telescopic sight is also drawn over the rifle's traditional carrying handle. Aaron's distinctive handwriting, also in red can now be seen on it, having spent a night scribbling random notes like "Wider barrel?", "Redesign chambering device", "One-piece titanium bolt", "Reticulating splines", and "Things To Get: Sausages, Cheese, Milk for Kitty".

***

With her personal white gunblade, Annie was pointing at the picture currently hanging in the training shed. It was a bowl of Japanese-style curry, oddly enough, with hunks of potato, carrot chopped onions and some unidentifiable meat thrown in, but it looked way better than anything the recruits had in weeks.

With A Company's lesson done in the morning, Annie was currently doing the same with B Company.

The word curry that you all know is really not a noun, but a verb," Annie explained. "It is the result of a specific combination of spices and ingredients, and a specific form of preparation often involving very long hours, which is why no two forms of curry are ever the same. Which is why it really does not matter if you are learning this from a Japanese or an Indian - what matters is the principles of curry that you are about to learn. Armed with this knowlege, you can prepare curry with what little ingredients you can find in the wild, and create a perfectly balanced meal the simplest way you can."

"That's kind of ridiculous, isn't it?" Ozz whispered. "What the heck are you going to find out there anyway?"

"The wild is a treasure trove of food that the man on the street cannot begin to fathom," said Ishin no Ookami. "Plants and animals of all kinds - with the simple application of knowlege, one could survive in the wild easily. What Annisama is teaching us is far above that level - where survival is the requirement, we could feast like kings using the discipline of curry preparation."

"...right," said Ozz, who really didn't know how to reply to that.

"Ishin is correct," said Optimus Prime Rib. "It's just like gumbo - you can't just make it out of a packet, like most folks do with curry, you have to source for real ingredients and put some genuine time and effort into it, otherwise it won't... it won't... well it simply won't turn out like the real thing at all, will it?"

"Sure, whatever," said Ishin offhandedly. He'd been distracted ever since Annie stepped into the training shed - Ishin was a person with some very peculiar taste in women, and Annie was a breath of fresh air compared to Sheba and sadie, but it was really Annie's professional knowlege on the subject she was teaching, and her sense of authority as she grilled B Company with one question after another, that had every bit of Ishin's attention.

These principles are far too complex for these simpletons, but she doesn't care... she's reaching out to these people even though she's far, far better than them... she's far too good for any of them.

Ishin jotted down a few more notes.

At last, someone could truly understand me.

***

There's a transparency pegged over the PR2-M3 rifle diagram now, with another rifle outline drawn over it. The outline is distinctly more streamlined than the old rifle, cutting out a lot of erroneous detail while refining the rifle's design into - as another transparency is laid over it - somethng that melds perfectly into the soldier's grip, as the rifle is brought together with a diagram of a soldier with his arms conveniently cradling the weapon. Also on the second transparency are several additional notes

Thanks to the plastic transparencies, we can see the reflection of light from an open, still-swinging door, as if Aaron had to be called off on some urgent business.

***

It's time for C Company to go through Annie's lesson. For the purposes of this fanfic, we shall skip right through the lecture and go straight to the practical session...

...which would have gone the rest of the way to hell if Annie had decided to wear Chairman Kaga's coat as well.

C Company was looking at a table covered with ingredients Annie had sourced for at short notice - rolls of bark that she claimed was cinnamon, two massive yellowtail, a helmet full of tiny black seeds, a flock of decapitated pigeons, a pile of fresh green leaves, and the real icing on the cake - a wild boar, so huge it had to be placed behind the table, gutted and decapitated. Since the table was already at the far end of the shed, this placed the still-bleeding boar over a convenient drainage grate - and sheds a lttle light on that urgent business Aaron was called off for....

MaximusFan picked out one of the black seeds, pinched it hard and ground it into powder with this fingertips. He waved that hand below his own face, sniffed it carefully.

"...You found raw pepper out here?" he asked.

"Sheba has a bunch of trolls picking them for her everyday, getting this much from a wild patch was easy," said Annie.

"These actually smell kind of interesting," said Jawbreaker, with a handful of green leaves.

"Those are coriander," Annie explained. "Useful for garnishing if little else. Be careful, their taste doesn't agree with some people."

"I'm sure it's nothing our blonde Caucasian stomachs can't handle, ma'am," said MaximusFan with a slight bow.

"With your permission, ma'am?" asked Powermaster Optimus Prime, the only sergeant with C Company for this lesson. Annie nodded, upon which he turned around and started barking "All right, men! Field pans full of water, back in here in 2 minutes! NOW!"

Everyone in C Company reached into the large back compartments of their webbing and pulled out another piece of army equipment - looking from a distance like a silver tortoise shell, this was in fact the field pan and primary cooking utensil of the TransFans military. The 'top' of the 'tortoise shell' was intended to be the bottom, being deliberately flattened, and the broomstick-style handle folded over the open top when it wasn't in use. One would have to be deaf to miss the clacking of stainless steel as some of the recruits decided to unfold the handles and lock them in place before going off. To top it all off, the entire thing being made of stainless steel meant that it had another intended use that probably didn't involve preparation of food...

***

The PR1-M3 diagram is now gone - apparently it was ripped off at the pegged corners, and the only indication of its fate is the faint murmurs offscreen, going "overbudget? OVER BUDGET?? WHAT F--KING BUDGET?!?!"

***

We loop back in time a little, to look at how A Company's lesson turned out.

Thanks to a little instigation fron Shanti, Predabot was convinced to tunnel some 30 feet into the ground outside the fence (the training shed was right next to the camp boundary, near a carefully chosen Safe Foraging Area that was bereft of hornet nests and carnivorous plants) and dig up every tuber and shoot on the way. While most of A Company got their foraging done this way, LROP and Tired Tracks carefully picked through the brace of coneys on what was dubbed the 'Iron Chef Table' where Annie placed all her sample ingredients for the recruits.

"You're about to see what Iron Chef Florida can do with these," said LROP, brandishing a helmet full of star aniseed and freshly dug tapioca. "I used to work a diner when I was raising the money for college."

"Oh don't you worry about me, pal," said Tired Tracks in reply. "I may not have prepared a lot of food in my lifetime - but we are dealing with curry, Laser Rod Optimus Prime, which is a primarily liquid food - and unless your experience in the diner involved nothing but all-nighters, it is my experience with making coffee that gives me the advantage, my friend."

Tracks pulled one of his flat cans of coffee concentrate out of a pocket.

"Iron Chef Java is in the house."

***

There is a hideous black spot in the corner of the drawing board, as if someone has been tapping a black pen repeatedly on it.

Finally, a fresh sheet is pulled from the roll over the drawing board, and black lines begin to stretch across it...

***

B Company's foraging stint started out a lot like A Company's, especially where Optimus Prime Rib being convinced to do all the work was concerned, but the outcome was very different indeed. Annie and Sergeant Blacksword stared dumbfounded as OPRib cane back into the training shed, carrying one of the few living creatues that matched his size.

"MECHA!! NOO!!!"

"Wait, hold on, that's not him at all," said Annie, restraining Blacksword with one dainty hand. As OPRib threw the creature to the ground, it became clear that it was in fact a grizzly bear, its throat crushed and head pummeled in what looked for all the world like the Choke Slam.

"More 'n 'nuff meat for everyone," said OPRib. "Who's hunting for spices again?"

"I got some of my homemade pretzel sauce, it'll complement the black pepper perfectly," said Gekigengar, pulling a small jar out of his webbing.

"And these indistinct but fully-developed tubers should top off the recipe perfectly," said spiderfrommars, his six arms all carrying helmets full of what was probably tapioca.

"As you can see I've assigned them to the tasks they were best suited for," said Ishin no Ookami. "We've been lucky thus far - not just in the foraging location, but you've proven to be an exceptional instructor, Annisama."

"...Thank you, I think," Annie replied, uneasy with this amount of attention.

"I mean seriously, you've not only taught these people what to look out for when foraging, but imparting the preparation of curry to us - I'm glad they were able to absorb it all, it means the field camp will be a bit more tolerable now..."

"Oh stop it, you," said Annie through her hand as she stifled a giggle - causing Ishin's eyes to narrow momentarily as he spotted her wedding band on her finger. "Seriously though, I hear they'll issue field rations to all of you, with everything prepared in foil packs and so on, so the recipe for curry really is more of a last resort sort of thing. I just felt you lot deserved a fighting chance, sort of thing."

"I'm glad someone here thinks that," said Ishin, using all his effort to hide his emotion. "We all deserve a fighting chance."

[Optimus Prime Rib]

BEAR PWNAGE BITCHES!!

[Aaron Hong]

Finally we return to the drawing board POV, where the black lines stretching across the paper are about to take on the shape of a rifle - one with a surprisingly wide barrel - when the entire scene fades into a convenient whiteboard bolted to the pillars of a training shed. From the dimmish natural lighting, it appears to be morning, and indeed the recruits of all three companies of the regiment are still yawning away. It's no fun at all to nod off when you're in full gear, helmet and webbing, but those are the requirements whenever training involves weapons.

And this morning, Aaron Hong had decided to conduct the training personally. Between him and the whiteboard was a row of tables, each with a few large rifles on it already, with the last table covered in a canvas, concealing something that was obviously a bit bigger than the regular rifles.

"As you all know by now, the field camp starts tomorrow," Aaron began, "and it is a requirement for soldiers to have their weapons with them at all times in the field. Due to complications arising over the weapons we use, it is imperative that I brief you on the new weapon you will be using before field camp begins - but I've chosen instead to extend it a little with some weapons history as well."

"Guess it's true what they've been saying," said Shanti. "Supposedly there's some kind of cease and desist directed towards our admins, or brass or whatever you wanna call 'em, saying we can't use the ammunition that our rifles fire because they contain potentially viral hack scripts, or something..."

"I'd like to see them try that in the real world," said Tired Tracks with a chuckle.

"Nothing potentially threatening about lead," shaxper murmured, "except maybe from poisoning..."

"The use of firearms in TransFans dates all the way back to the early years of Omega Supreme's administration," Aaron began. "Oddly enough, the first firearm fired in TransFans wasn't exactly the first assault rifle designed here - anyone like to venture a guess who did it?"

Shanti jabbed a thumb into Predabot's ribs.

"Aaaiyee!"

"Recruit Predabot?"

Tired Tracks fought the temptation to hit Shanti about the head for that - it would only make things worse, as Predabot was drawn hypnotically to his feet, an answer he hadn't thought over long enough about to escape his lips.

"...Brendocon?"

Aaron responded with a look of genuine surprise, while his hands moved independently of his brain by motioning at Predabot to be seated. "It was a newbie shooting," Aaron continued, "which led to a debate over whether firearms should be allowed to quell these threats quickly and terminally. Since Brend was one of the strongest lobbyists in that case, the thread was closed and deleted before - or possibly after- it got out of hand, while Omega Supreme signed the bill to authorise the creation and usage of TransFans' first assault rifle - the infamous People's Rifle project which has left its mark on the weapons you carry today."

Aaron took a swig from a can of root beer as he walked towards the first table and took the sample rifle from it. It was a bulky old thing, made almost entirely of matt black coated metal, and the sheer size gave everyone pause.

"This was one of the earliest submitted designs," said Aaron. "Good ammo capacity, excellent range, but unfortunately the recoil meant that you had to mount it on something to use it. It was pulled as an assault rifle, but enjoyed some popularity as a rollbar weapon on several vehicles. This was the People's Rifle 0 - Wide Load, commonly referred as PR0-WL."

shaxper raised an eyebrow as Aaron picked up the next weapon - much smaller than the first, this was a simple, sleek affair in matt black and ironwood, with a tiny magazine that probably held about 15 shots.

"This was the original People's Rifle, designed by an aspiring young TransFan called Best First to fire hollowpoints. It forms a benchmark for future rifle design as it utilised a real-world feature, taking the expansion of superheated air in the chamber from each shot and channeling it back to the bolt to draw it back and load the next round instantaneously. Sadly the caliber wasn't enough to qualify for the assault rifle class, so this thing was relegated to game hunting for a while. The records give its name as People's Rifle - Automatic Technology, the PR-AT."

Someone stifled a chuckle.

"The People's Rifle 1," said Aaron, ignoring that as he took a rifle from the next table, "became the template for all future assault rifles, due mainly to its distinctive design." He paused for a bit to make sure everyone got a good look at the rifle in his hands - not as sleek as the PR-AT, thanks in part to the bigger magazine, and with a distinct handle over the rifle body, though retaining the ironwood buttstock. "With some input from our Weirdwolf, the airpipe charging system was turned into a two-pipe array for greater stability and accuracy during repeat firing, while the improved protective handgrip around the barrel allowed it to cool faster - and fire longer. This was called Continuous Kinetics, and the weapon in turn was named the PR1-CK."

"Kind of appropriate that Brend started all this," Tracks giggled.

"It's not the size, it's how you use it," Shanti quipped.

"Best First tried to make a comeback with this next design," said Aaron, showing off another firearm. "An expansion on the new PR1 template, this one had an increased caliber to compensate for his last design - but unfortunately the chamber got dirty a lot faster, and the cleaning process always ended up in a faceful of soot. BF admitted later that he'd never heard from his R&D people concerning this, which was attributed directly to his .55 caliber design for the PR1-55."

"Did he just say priss?" asked Predabot, killing the joke before it had a chance.

"As a last ditch attempt to get back in the game Best First tried to create a rifle that didn't fire bullets at all," said Aaron as he brought out the weirdest item of the lot. "It used compressed air to send grappling hooks up the sides of buildings, but it wasn't till the third refining of the design that Impactor - you know him now as Impactor Returns, you'll see why soon - used it to clear a blockage in the pipes around his residence that BF scrapped the idea, even disavowing his involvement with the project, and ultimately banning Impactor. He came back under the name Impactor Returns to reveal the official name for this weapon, the People's Rifle - Utility (Demonstration model 3), or..."

"...the PR-UD3," everyone murmured quietly in perfect timing.

"They should keep this project going on and on," said Predabot, with growing enthusiasm. "Maybe the third reinterpretation of the People's Rifle will have such long range that it can be used by ground troopers. who don't have the clearance, to... to participate in governmental cover-ups, because it can hit things the troopers can't see for themselves! It'll be called..." he had to think for a bit, "the People's Rifle 3 - Mobile ARmor Infantry for Termination of ALiens and Sinister EXperiments! It's an acronym for..."

LROP immediately grabbed Predabot's webbing and wrapped it around his neck, stemming his air flow and the capacity for speech.

"Thank you," said Tired Tracks, breaking out some camouflage paint to conceal Predabot's purplish hues.

Aaron picked up the most familiar weapon of the lot, and stopped for a bit. "I think you all know about the PR1-M3 by now," he said. "It stands for People's Rifle 1 - Mass-produced series 3, and if you don't know any more about t than that, I will pt you through the entire training process all over again if I have to. Sadly, time constraints require me to move right on to the real reason you're all here..."

He approached the final table and pulled the canvas off - revealing a weapon in black and gleaming silver. Picking it up revealed it to be another permutation of the classic PR1 design, but with an extra-large chambering system and barrel. The length had been reduced as if to compensate for the weight, but judging from the way Aaron handled it in one hand, it wasn't as heavy as it looked.

"Those of you who are thinking that this thing is hollow or something - are right," said Aaron, pulling back a handle and causing the chamber to swing open - revealing a space a foot wide. "And those of you who have heard about the cease and desist on the use of Boardspace bullets that carry IP hacking scripts, or 'bannunition' - are also right."

shaxper was the first one to see where this was going. And he wasn't sure he liked it.

"After trying to split the limited budget between the weapon and its new ammo over the space of four designs, I decided that I could splurge it all on a system of superconductors that can propel any item at all at a subsonic speed - because it would remove the need for a budget on new ammunition." Aaron emptied the root beer can down his throat. "This is now the People's Rifle 1 - Mass-produced (Universal ammunition) 5. In essence, I have built you a weapon, my soldiers, that will fire anything."

Aaron had been walking towards the far end of the training shed the whole time, past the whiteboard and stopping in front of the third lane of the infamous firing range. In a series of practived moves, he loaded the root beer can into the rifle, levelled it down the firing lane, and pulled the trigger.

There was a hollow metallit ktonggg as the can barreled down the firing lane in a perfectly horizontal trajectory, and hit the waiting target head on... blowing a hole the size of a fist in its head.

"Ohh, Aaron you gone and done it now," said LROP.

"My soldiers are the rocks, and the trees, and the birds in the sky," said Aaron in closing. "Although it's more practical if the birds are less than a foot long, and already dead."

[Aaron Hong]

Time to get your pencils and notepads. You may be graded on this later.


***

Night came yet again, and A Company saw fit to restore Predabot's respiratory abilities.

Annie was navigating the long corridors of the barracks on her own - Aaron was tied up somewhere else, and she figured that with her own ceramic gunblade at her side she'd be all right by herself. She had business this time, distributing shoe polish-sized cans of concentrated curry formula to the recruits. A fairly routine business despite the fact that it was off record, and the soldiers were certainly glad for that.

"Glad to have you with us on this one, ma'am," said spiderfrommars, four of his hands in the pockets of his army pants, looking sheepish for once. "I know how you've been under quite a bit of pressure over all those different departments wanting you transferred over and all..."

"Oh, that's all past now," Annie replied. "I was about to ask, where's the big one... Optimus Prime Rib, was it?"

spiderfrommars looked a lot less sheepish now. "Oh... I think he's with that Ishin no Ookami now. Sometimes they spot each other at the weights - that Ish can haul a lot for his size, would you believe it?"

"I see. The gym," said Annie. A second or two passed. "You have your own gym?"

"Oh, it's all off-the-record stuff," spiderfrommars explained. "OPRib told us how back in his hometown, they used leftover bits from construction sites to create exercise equipment, that's how he got to his size... Ish got us all to chip in, and now we've created a fully-functional gym that the other companies don't know about. The sarge's in on it too - mainly 'cos he's a regular patron now, heh heh..."

Annie nodded to all this. "I'll be off to find him then, thanks for your time... oh, and you do know Ish on its own doesn't mean anything in Japanese, don't you?"

spidey waved at Annie with two arms as she walked off. "Funny... that's what he said..."

***

The business Aaron was tied up with concerned the field camp site. Training officer Colonel Eline Witkam had mistakenly designated a patch of swampland for the pitching of three hundred tents by the soldiers, and after some sifting through the sattelite photos (which still left Aaron somewhat uneasy, even now), they'd agreed on an old butte that had grown over just a little, but not too much. Having to give the location a name turned into a huge point of contention for Eline, unfortunately...

"...Aaron, how's things?" asked Hound, as he saw Aaron walking past the central garage, home to the regiment's humvees and trucks. Three of those trucks currently stood parked outside.

"Oh, had some last-minute business to take care off," Aaron replied. "The field campsite has been changed to Eline's Butte."

"...excuse me?"

"Yeah, it might have been Eline's Marsh but we decided at the last minute that you couldn't stick anything in it," said Aaron, causing Hound's eyebrows to climb ever higher. "So we found Eline's Butte and stuck a thumbtack in it so we won't lose it, when the big march begins."

Aaron noted Hound's expression at this point.

"Yes, I said march," siad Aaron, with a little more enunciation. "We're doing this old school. Tomorrow morning, three hundred recruits with every piece of equipment on their persons will be marching the whole twenty klicks all the way up to Eline's Butte."

"They couldn't just ask her nicely?" Hound murmured.

"Oh, we'll have water breaks of course, it's only fair," Aaron explained. "Designated at specific points for the kids to get a good look at the scenery - it's only right to let them see what it is they're fightng for."

"...Eline's Butte?" Hound asked.

"I don't think they'll be able to spot it till they're in the last four klicks of the walk," said Aaron. "It's big and wide, but a bit low-lying and overgrown with... On to important business. I want two of these trucks reassigned. The third one carries the soldiers' water. See to it."

"Sir yes sir," said Hound in mock-American tones, watching as Aaron walked off again.

"...And people think I'm on the wrong side of God..."

***

The B Company gym was really in a corner unit of the building that nobody could see - the building was on raised ground, and close to the perimeter, so the one angle you might be able to see it from was out of bounds. It was a different matter in the corridors though - the loud grunts of Optimus Prime Rib hefting a bar with two engine blocks bolted on resounded through the hallways long before Annie even stepped into view.

"There, you've had enough," said Ishin no Ookami, taking the barbell off OPRib's hands and resting it on the bench, which didn't creak because it was concrete. "I'm going to take my special barbell and do some moves on the roof - you be a good boy and go straight back, you hear me?"

"All right," OPRib replied. He stopped to rest, not looking as Ishin picked up another barbell, which had been hewn off at three feet and bolted to an engine block on one end. The other end was wrapped in leather, looking for all the world like a makeshift samurai sword handle.

If Annie had stepped in at the right time, she would have seen this unique piece of training equipment and realised right away how much of a danger Ishin no Ookami really was - as fate would have it, he had taken the thing and walked out the back door to the roof access stairwell long before she stepped in, and found OPRib alone on the bench.

"Rib?..."

"TEN-HUT - AAARRRGH!!" Optimus Prime Rib made the mistake of standing at attention all at once while his body was still aching from the fifty bench presses. Annie reacted in an instant, pulling out her silk sash and wrapping it once around OPRib to slow his fall.

"Thank you, ma'am - boy, this is embarassing," OPRib joked.

"It's all right," said Annie. "I've been meaning to ask you one thing - we'd better sit down first..."

They located a rubber mat in the middle of the gym, and sat down.

"Now, about that bear you hunted for the foraging session? It looks as if you've had a bit of experience hunting game, haven't you?"

OPRib beamed. "We did it a lot, back in my hometown - it's not all gutting and stuffing, the trick is to approach the game from downwind and to look through, not over the shrubbery... and I never really did any gutting and stuffing, my dad would handle that..."

"I see," said Annie, "you mean to say you've never actually... dealt with the creatures you've hunted?"

"Actually there was some times," OPRib explained. "Me dad taught me how to break the neck of fowl just right so it doesn't feel a thing and put up a fuss... learned that the hard way, after we had to chase a headless one around the yard and into Mrs Mason's driveway with its blood all..."

"Yes, yes, I'm sure that was quite a complication to deal with," said Annie hurriedly, while thinking This would be a lot harder to listen to if I didn't use to work in a hospital... "So this would be the first time you dealt with... a bear?"

"Yeah, I wasn't sure if it'd work out the same way," said OPRib, "but Ishin no Ookami told me that the exact same principle would work this time around, just needs the proportionate amount of force..."

"Oh dear," said Annie. "He couldn't be bothered to tell you everything..."

Optimus Prime Rib looked up at Annie, the first light of dread sneaking into his eyes.

"...Miss Annie?"

Annie heaved a sigh. "I used to work in a maternity ward, you see..."

OPRib's expression lightened considerably. "That sounds nice," he replied. "Having a hand in bringing all those little babies into this world, it's a huge responsibility it is..."

"There's a rare few that don't quite make it, though."

OPRib's expression darkened yet again.

"The thing is, I've seen one too many of those cases, and I learned something from the head neurosurgeon - the human central nervous system is incredibly complicated, with multiple systems fused between each other, becoming very hard to take down indeed because of all the backup systems that step in should something fail."

One look at OPRib, and Annie knew she wasn't getting through to him.

"You know how you can slug a guy over the head with the back of a gun and he's out cold?" OPRib nodded. "That's all Hollywood," said Annie, giving him his first real surprise of the day. "It takes a LOT of effort to take down an entire central nervous system completely. Some parts always keep running, thanks mainly to the spinal cord and additional nerve centers in the..." Dammit, Annie, keep it simple. "You know how that bear was still twitching when you dropped him on the ground?"

Optimus Prime Rib nodded. "But Ishin told me that there'll always be a little nervous activity some time after it..."

"It was a nervous reaction," said Annie. "Rib, that poor thing was twitching in pain."

Optimus Prime Rib slumped backwards as the full shock of the event finally hit him. "It was... it was still... but I put my full body weight behind that blow, I know it was enough, it..."

"It wasn't enough to snap it like a chicken," said Annie.

"But Ishin explained it all to me and..."

"Then Ishin doen't know enough of what he's talking about either," said Annie. "And now he's going to get people around him implicated for what he's doing. I'd be very careful of him if I were you."

Optimus Prime Rib could only let his head drop into his massive hands, unable to say much of anything now. Annie considered putting a hand on his shoulder, but the fact of the matter was she simply couldn't reach it.

One thing Annie hadn't noticed was that Ishin no Ookami had not only forgotten to take his towel with him, but returned to the gym to get it - and heard everything.

[Optimus Prime Rib]

I get to kill Ishin!! I get to kill Ishin!

[Aaron Hong]

First song in a long while here... and more stuff at Pred's expense. So, mostly the same old, same old.

***

Let us fast forward the story a little, to the hour before revellie. Traditionally the all-too-familiar trumpeting sound of revellie is what wakes all the soldiers in the morning, quite literally the first order of business in the army, but it's important to remember that an army functions because some parts of it need to be up and running way before that.

For today's example we shall look at the cookhouse, where Annie, Sheba and Nebbie are hard at work preparing breakfast for a battalion. It's the morning of the big field camp, and to save some time Aaron already passed order for everyone to eat breakfast in the quadrangle - to save even more time, the cookhouse had to get it ready about an hour early.

"Not the first time that boy's kept you up in the mornin' is it sugar?" Nebbie asked, with one eye clearly affixed on Annie. "I hear you two got five kids of yer own to show for it, ain't that right?"

"Well..." Annie heaved a sigh, which fortunately came at the end of the carrot she was chopping. "We don't talk about it much, but two of them are adopted... it happens a lot when you work a maternity ward..."

"Whoa." Nebbie stopped to replace the lid on a pot. "Your nursin' folk find abandoned babies too, eh?"

"It's all par for the course, really," said Annie, loading the chopped carrots into a fresh pot as Nebbie placed her hands on the handles of her pot. "Spend a little too much time with each baby and we'll fall in love with them. Happens all the time... okay, on three. One. Two."

"HUP!"

Annie and Nebbie executed a perfect Indy-swap, replacing Nebbie's pot on the still-burning stove with the one Annie had just loaded. Sheba was busy laying out those disposable lunchboxes all this time, covering one long table after another with rows numbering into the hundreds.

"Yo, Sheba!" Nebbie yelled. "I think that moose meat you threw into the gumbo's a bit underdone!"

"Well if we knew they needed the protien earlier it wouldn't be!" Sheba yelled back.

"You heard the rumors! I mean Aaron's been runnin' em to the ground every dang week, you know he woulda thought a' this long ago!" Nebbie yelled again, as Annie found two ladles and handed her one.

"There's the question of humane treatment, my way-southern sister," said Sheba, pushing the table of lunchboxes into position. "I mean, Canada's never had a standing army so I can't say for sure, but I know no sergeant, however they want to dress that rank up, is going to knowingly make his troops..."

***

"...march with full gear and weapons in hand for twenty kilometres, all the way to the camp site," said shaxper to his A Company buddies. It was about ten minutes after revellie now, and he, Laser Rod Optimus Prime, Tired Tracks, Shanti418 and Predabot were standing together with lunch boxes in hand, their morning gumbo half eaten, and staring down the road, past the main gate and all the way up to the mountainous outer reaches of TransFans.

"You folks think you're up to it?" asked LROP.

"Pass. My Java doesn't pack that kind of energy," said Tracks.

"This Aaron of yours does things old school, no doubt about that," said Shanti. "And yet he's got all his fingers deep into the fancy technology behind these things," he added as he admired the new PR1-MU5 weapon currently slung at his side. "You folks don't got nothin' but lunatics to make friends with, do you?"

"Don't talk about Tracks like that," sais shaxper, raising some much-needed laughs, except from Tracks who just went "HEY!!"

"Well?" LROP asked Predabot. "Even you wouldn't be looking forward to something like that, would you?"

Predabot slurped up another mouthful first. "It'd be our first time out of TransFan limits since before we enlisted," he said, with what sounded like wonderment. "And I swear that greenery's grown even thicker over the past week... what do you think is in there?"

A wave of shouts drowned out any response that Predabot might have drawn, as B Company got to its feet, every single soldier not only with webbing and helmet on but carrying rifles and backpacks as well. The items going into the backpack followed a very specific protocol that all the soldiers were drilled on - spare change of clothes, shaving razors, toothbrush, powder bottle, some other stuff, and most importantly, field rations. Annie's lessons on preparing forage were indeed intended as a last resort, as everyne had been issued with things like pasta in sauce, beef stew and grits (no prizes for guessing whose idea that was) in basic foil packs designed to draw in heat from a warm engine or direct sunlight.

Despite this load, everybody in B Company made it off their duffs and stood at attention with hardly any fuss. Optimus Prime Rib wound up with two backpacks jerry-rigged over his haunches, looking more like saddlebags than anything - spiderfrommars used his extra arms to secure his own backpack quickly before folding them out of sight.

"Mother of... look at that giant they have with them," said Tired Tracks. "Those pouches on his webbing are more backpacks. He's helping out some of those guys with their load."

Shanti felt his eyes drifting towards Predabot - until the five soldiers got their next shock.

"Good to see you've all volunteered, soldiers," said SGT Leatherneck, looking directly at shax, LROP, Tracks, Shanti and Pred - by the time they realised that the rest of A Company was sitting apart from them and pretending that nothing was happening, it was too late.

Oh, for the love of...

"Could I ask just what it is we're volunteering for, exactly?" asked Predabot. Tracks let his face fall into his open hands.

"You ladies just got guard of honor duty!" Leatherneck annnounced, with uncharacteristic spirit. "As some of you have been spreadin' word around, Captain Mecha is indeed joining us for the entirety of the twenty-klick march. And RSM Aaron has seen fit to implement an ancient war protocol just for this event..."

Dammit, Aaron, thought Tracks. I would have forgiven your aversion to caffeine once before, but this...

"You lot will stand guard around Mecha's four legs," said Leatherneck. "Basically you'll march ahead of A Company, but flanking Mecha on either side. That's pretty much it."

Five faces lightened up considerably. "That's all?" asked shaxper.

"You folks have until the captain gets here to decide who takes which corner. I don't want any time wasted on deliberating. As you were." Leatherneck turned and left, as shax and his group just looked among each other.

"Okay, this is how we'll do it," said Tired Tracks. "We'll go by the way we're standing right now - I'm second from right, so I get the right front corner, Shanti's at the rightmost so he gets right hind corner..."

"You're forgetting something else," said Shanti. "Four corners, right? Why do we need five of us?"

shaxper, LROP, Tracks and Shanti looked amongst each other for a bit - and then, with uncanny timing, all four of them laid eyes on Predabot, who hadn't figured it out for himself. It wasn't until Shanti reached for Predabot's backpack, retrieved the standard-issue folding shovel, and placed it in his hands.

"...oh, sh..."

"YES."

***

It was finally time for the long march to begin - all of A Company rose to their feet, albeit in a rather disorganised fashion. Aaron had been stalking down the ranks of B Company, looking back and forth at everyone's attire and equipment and whatever... and then he reached A Company, and got a bit of a shock at the grossly misshapen backpacks they carried. It seemed that on top of their standard-issue items like rolled-up canvas tents and field rations, someone had thought of packing things like tinned fruit, cup noodles, sardines, the odd six-pack, cans of Java, a gas stove or two, and even rolled-up hammocks.

It was all Aaron could do to look the other way, just this once.

"Mecha, glad you could join us today," he said to the massive lumbering form of Mecha the Giant Hamster, who'd been unknowingly been given standard-issue equipment of his own, judging from the saddlebags he now carried. A camouflage-patterned triangle strapped onto his head circus-elephant style bore his Captain rank.

"The officers get standard-issue thongs? What the hell?" Shanti murmured.

"Guard of Honor, form up!"

Aaron's sudden yell brought the foursome to full sobriety, as they ran instinctively to the four corners of their oversized commanding officer. Tracks looked up and down at the harness, which looked like the same material that went into their webbing, and considered hitching his backpack to it for part of the march, but...

"Don't even think about it," said a sergeant already sitting atop Mecha. The foursome looked up in surprise - which turned into even more surprise when they saw who it was.

"bobaprime!"

"Yeah, I finished up artillery training and got sent back here," bobaprime announced. "Sorry, but in wartime Mecha will also be towing our howitzer into battle, so I can't carry any more than this. Against regulation."

"Well, that sucks," Shanti murmured to himself... then cast a sidelong glance at Predabot, who was not relishing his position in the 'Guard of Honor' at all. There was no time for Shanti's train of thought to reach the station, as Mecha started moving, taking post between A Company and B, which was already in mid-march towards the main gate. It was time for A Company to gear up and get ready for the mind-numbing ordeal of marching all the way to the camp site, and Leatherneck had taken position at the side of A Company, shouting orders in Mecha's place...

...and the rest of A Company, rifles in hand and bulging backpacks strapped on, started following Mecha and his guard, trudging down the tarmac and out the gate, with a rhythm that would soon drown out the obligatory chant of 'left, right' or whatever they decided to cook up on the spot, printable or otherwise... all of it would gravitate towards the rhythmic trudging in the end.


(To the tune of 'Paint it Black' by the Rolling Stones)

I see a black door and I want it painted red
No colors any more except for this one red
I see the girls go by, and they just point and stare
Like they're the only ones who wear red underwear

I see a line of cars and they're all painted red
I found the kid who did it and bashed in his head
I see people turn their heads and quickly look away
The cops will treat it like it happens everyday

I look inside myself and see my guts are red
I see that black door and it has been painted red
Maybe then I'll fade into the crowds and hide out instead
It's not easy facing people when your whole world is red

No more will my red sea part to let in the Jews
I could not foresee this thing happening to youse
If I look hard enough into the blood red moon
My love will laugh at me for wearing red in June

I see a black door and I want it painted red
No colors any more except for this one red
I see the girls go by, dressed in bright red swimwear
Do they know what it means, or do they even care

Mmmm-mmmm-mmmm-mmmm-mmmm-mmmm-mmmm-mmmm-mmmm-mmmm-mmmm-mmmm
Mmmm-mmmm-mmmm-mmmm-mmmm-mmmm-mmmm-mmmm-mmmm-mmmm-mmmm-mmmm...

I wanna see it paint - Painted red - Red as blood - Red as hell
I wanna see the sun - Dripping red in the sky
I wanna see it paint - Paint - Paint - Painted red - Yeah

[Aaron Hong]

Time for another look at how everyone's favourite BS-1 pilot is doing.

***

At roughly the same time, Rebis the Insolent Dog was sitting across the room from Metal Vendetta, who'd been doing a little landscape observation of his own.

Stuck on a blank wall with Blu-Tak was a sattelite photo that functioned as a map, some five feet wide and covered in grayscale ground features and scribbles with highlighters in three different colors. MV whipped out one of the highlighters, a neon yellow one, and carefully outlined a barren, rocky area.

"And yesterday, I flew over that, you see what I mean?" he said to Rebis. "Look at all these areas. Just a hop, skip and jump to TFArchive airspace. Haven't they learned anything by now?"

Rebis shrugged.

"I mean, I know that new office woman said she had someone on the case... from the looks of it nobody else is. What exactly are they doing about this anyway? Trudging through the marsh searching for that bay door?"

Rebis stepped closer to the map, and stared into it.

"Maybe, we could just gamble that they don't even know it came down on their turf - or maybe it didn't hit their turf..." MV was interrupted by a low growl from Rebis. "I know, that's dangerous thinking. But wouldn't it stand to reason that finding our people sneaking around on TFArchive territory would be far worse for us than finding an unidentifiable hunk of junk?"

Rebis thought hard about this.... and was interrupted by the sound of a highlighter dropping to the floor.

"Oh lord... I can't believe I didn't see it," said MV. "The whole deliberately-flying-too-close-to-their-airspace thing. Filling their tabloid pages with nothing but us. It's a diversion. The brass is planning something else under the counter while we keep Brend's eyes fixed on us. My god, Rebis, we're Besty's f**king Punch and Judy act."

"Grrr-rowrr-rarrff."

Metal Vendetta sighed. "Yes, that would draw a completely different audience, wouldn't it?"

"Bark-bark-bark, woof woof."

"What do we have against them?" Metal Vendetta thought hard about this. "Well, autobloke did give me a spare black box from the hangar, and I used it to record the whole of karaoke night in the Ivory Tower... what do you think? Should we have that on board next time we fly?"

Rebis nodded.

"All right then," said MV. "I'll see about bringing one of these maps along as well, lord knows it's hard enough to maintain your sense of direction after you hit the first G..."

***

The recruits of the first TransFans regiment were just realising how much worse things could get, as the afternoon sun, now outside of camp boundaries, was free to call its mates from the pub and hurl even more searing heat than usual onto the forests and truck-worn paths that were all the soldiers could see, and possibly keep in their short-term memory. Fortunately, one of the trucks that followed them on their march was on hand to provide the recruits with much needed lunch.

"This isn't nearly as much as we get in camp," said Shanti, staring at the pork chop on the end of his fork. "You folks were maximising the truck's carrying room or something, weren't you?"

"You have no clue how much leftover marching you have to do, don't you?" said Aaron. "Shouldn't be eating so heavily in the first place - it stretches your stomach and makes it feel less full when you eat the same amount. Clinically proven."

"Is that what happened to him?" asked Tired Tracks, as the A Company foursome turned slowly towards B Company - specifically the only member of B Company who stood above the others when he sat down.

"...I don't honestly know," said Aaron. "He seems a little moody though... look at that, his size seems to be driving the others away. Note how they talk amongst themselves in small groups, then each group sends one or two members around to hook up with another diminishing group or individual... you'd think they worked on that system beforehand..."

"Well, this is the army," said shaxper. "You're gonna get your stand-out types who can't help how they look... or how they behave in some cases... which reminds me, where's that Ish guy?"

"Who?" asked Tired Tracks.

"Ishin no Ookami," said Aaron. "Annie told me about him. Didn't think it was serious when he started talking to Predabot all those times..."

"Or you didn't care," said Shanti.

"...but he's been trying to win OPRib over as well. Could be dangerous to all of us if he succeeded..." Aaron stopped for a second, and everyone saw the new look on his face. "Only Annie said she's doing her part to put OPRib back on the right path. I just hope it's not too late."

***

Rebis had the job of standing guard as Metal Vendetta carefully planted the extra black box in his personal BS-1 fighter (the bomb bay doors had been replaced, but there was a general consensus that nobody wanted to fly that thing, holding out for the alpha release when that fault would be removed). Normally a simple enough process, but the fact that EmVee's legs were flapping and flailing from the cockpit while he struggled to make the room made it hard for Rebis to concentrate on his job.

"Package is secured," EmVee reported. "Now for the maps..." He took a look at the folded papers, now big enough to go into a manila folder... then decided to stuff them in his flightsuit when Rebis let out a warning growl.

By the time it reached barking level, MV was still upside down in the cockpit and struggling to get out, as the footsteps came close and closer... by the time that sound turned into a full-blown knock on the fighter's fuselage, it was too late.

"...Going still like that's not helping," said the voice of Kup_1 through the stainless steel construction. Metal Vendetta decided to switch to two-footed thrust kicks to get himself out of the cockpit, which didn't work at all, and Kup_1 just sighed and grabbed MV by the belt to pull him out.

"If I wasn't completely and utterly swamped by disbelief right now," she said, "I might be able to piece together the most obvious question for you at this point - how does the Reno Police Department do this? - but right now all I can do is anchor myself to the most concrete thing available to me right now." She whipped out some papers of her own.

"My orders?" said EmVee. She nodded.

"We've tuned up the engine of your fighter and we want to see how it turned out," she elaborated. "Just keep the rudders still and take her into a straight line. GPS will report if you veer off course and so on. Any questions?"

"Yeah, I got one," said EmVee, and Kup_1 failed to notice the spark of spontaniety in his eye. "How come this is the one air military unit in the world that doesn't make all its pilots go through psyche evaluations?"

Kup_1 looked up at him, and failed to notice it again.

"That would require a more powerful web diving process," she replied. "Current Boardspace technology allows us to meet and talk in real time but it cannot fathom the human psyche upon request."

"...why is that?"

"...it'd be considered as invasion, I guess," she replied. "Contemprary science fiction has always looked upon the fusion of technology and biology in a very bad light. Web diving like we are now just barely gets around the 'rules' that have been set up concerning this case... is there a point to all these questions, Captain Robert Leese Jones?"

"Oh, nothing specific really," EmVee replied. "Just that, I've been curious about the limits of interaction that Boardspace has set up around us... you're still a bit of a newbie to Boardspace, haven't you wondered about that yourself?"

And Kup_1 only just noticed it - the way EmVee was leaning askew with one hand on the fighter, looking directly at her the whole time - and cursed herself for not seeing it earlier.

"That sounds very specific indeed, captain," she said. "I should probably leave you on your way now," she added, turning on her heel and walking away.

And Metal Vendetta also realised it too late, that she'd also kicked out the wedge under the BS-1's front tyre, causing it to roll forward a bit - with his hand still on it.

Rebis took a long at the prone form of EmVee, and sniggered again.

"Oh, ram it," EmVee scowled. "Like you didn't want some real action yourself."

[Aaron Hong]

After hours of marching in full gear with the Boardspace sun in their eyes, the recruits of the First Transfans Regiment finally took a sharp turn off the main dirt road, going through a truck-ridden opening in the brush...

...to enter a massive, partly-grassy baked-dirt clearing that could have housed three football fields, except that the southeast corner was a very distinct slope up, and some jungle flora comsuned the opposite corner. The rest of the clearing was mostly uneven, with a few rocks and gopher holes thrown in for good measure, but remarkably dry, which was something the recruits would appreciate in good time.

Leatherneck doublechecked the location on his map, then tried to forget the name printed over it.

Aaron watched as the entire regiment, still in its three-block formation from the beginning of the march, filed into the clearing and came to a stop. The fatigue was showing by now, with everyone unable to march in time and Optimus Prime Rib having to support two of his fellow soldiers.... but Aaron knew just how to fix that.

"REGIMENT!! LEEEEEFT - FACE!"

With a single almighty CRUNCH, six hundred boots stomped and ground the dirt beneath them, as the First TransFans Regiment turned to face Aaron. Drills were one of the first things soldiers learned, not because they were expected to march into the hellfire of battle, but only to imprint the discipline of the military into them. Some saw it as little more than a test of one's ability to follow orders, and in some cases, a much needed lesson in which was left and right, but for now... it was to direct their attention.

"Congratulations on surviving the march, soldiers," said Aaron. "You have remained in formation, you have not fallen out, and you have all made it here. For once I can say I am proud of you. For that I will promise you two things - one, if you finish your one remaining task of the day, I will end the day's training right there and then, and give you an early night's sleep. And two, you will not walk a step for the return trip as the trucks you were promised will be here to bring you home. Do you approve of this arrangement, soldiers?!"

"SIR, YES SIR!!" the soldiers responded, with a double charge of morale firing behind their barrels.

"Very good," Aaron replied. "For those of you who have not guessed at it by now, your one remaining task of the day is to set up camp. You will pitch your tents, you will set up the perimeter, and with the sun almost down you will have an added incentive to do this as quickly as you can. You are out in the field now. Before you become ministers of war praying for combat, you must learn to conduct yourselves properly in church; meaning that light discipline will be enforced."

Every sldier in the regiment knew what that meant. For tactical reasons, all torches had to be fitted with colored filters (determining their respective Companies) to reduce light emitted, and even those had to be shut off at 2359hrs so enemy spotters overhead wouldn't have a convenient target.

"Thank you, Leatherneck," said Aaron, as Leatherneck quickly set up a massive chart with a map of their camp site. "As you can all see, this map is full of a lot of additional features that I expect to be there when you are done. Setting the perimeter is the sergeants' primary concern, and some of you may be called to volunteer your assistance - your primary concern is the setting up of your tents." Aaron raised his sheathed gunblade and tapped on a gridlined area. "I do not care if you want your tent next to the head or next to the perimeter, or wherever you think has the best scenery, but your tents must be within the boundaries we have set. From A Company in the southwest corner, to C Company in the northwest. And all of your tents must face in the same direction. If you find that the ground has to many rocks or gophers I suggest you find a better spot very quickly indeed. That'll be all for now. Sergeants, carry on."

And Aaron instantly regretted saying that, as Leatherneck and every sergeant there started yelling and barking at the troops, who dropped their backpacks and started grabbing their canvasses and tent sticks - and then realised it was really more convenient to bring the entire backpack to the tenting area and then pick whatever they needed from them. Fortunately, the sergeants couldn't be bothered to yell that loud after the first ten minutes.

Truth was, the locations of their tents wasn't the most important factor here - each soldier had only one canvas and two foot-long rods, which meant that you needed two soldiers to make up a whole tent. It should have been fairly obvious, since the traditional tent could only be made with two people pulling the opposite corners and pegging them into place with only two short poles holding the bugger up. Of course, some would attribute this to the need to build caramaderie, but as Predabot was currently proving, building a tent on your own was quite impossible.

"I'd better give you a hand with that," said bobaprime, helping Predabot to his feet. "Seriously, even if you get this thing upright on your own... what then?"

"What do you mean?" Predabot asked.

"You know there's room in the backpack for just one canvas," bobaprime explained. "Your buddy's canvas lines the bottom so you don't have to sleep on the dirt, didn't you know that?"

Predabot went quiet, as bobaprime took a long look at his backpack. "But you do have your poncho in there, don't you?" he asked.

Predabot nodded, and pulled it out - a massive sheet of thick nylon, thinner than the tent canvas, with a hole in the middle and a velcro-lined hood over that hole. This item would function as a raincoat, its design intended to cover every inch of equipment on the soldier, with the hood just the right size to fit under the helmet. Upon closer inspection, Predabot realised that the poncho was not only the same size as the tent canvas, but had eyelets along its edges as well.

"...oh yeah," said Predabot, as the truth came to light. "They left that part out of our tenting lessons."

"Some parts you have to work out for yourself," said bobaprime. "And don't forget pegging the edges to the overhead canvas so..."

"...rainwater doesn't get inside. I remember that one," said Predabot. "I'm glad they sent you back."

"Glad to be back, soldier." bobaprime gave Predabot a pat on the back. "Gotta go now, there's a roll of barbed wire with my name on it."

***

One important reason that the sergeants were given the job of setting up the perimeter was the level of danger involved.

And not just from the barbed wire either. In a way, the sergeants were acting as reconnaisance as they walked around the border of the campsite, checking for areas to stick their iron pickets as well as unmarked minefields and other hazards. The soldiers only got the piss-easy job of fixing tents because the sergeants would be held accountable for anything that happened to them if they strayed out of an undefined border.

Fortunately they had Aaron Hong, his Fire elemental able to detect the presence of dormant explosives, as he remained close at hand to check certain areas first, or just to offer suggestions. "Hold on, everybody stop at that last picket," he said as he stepped into an area of nothing but tall grass. With his sheathed gunblade he prodded and probed the area gingerly.

"Is that where the head will be?" asked Blacksword.

"I'll send for Predabot with the shovels," said Leatherneck with a giggle.

Aaron sighed. "I know tall grass has its uses, sergeants, but practical application tells us that this is not the place for the head at all. Do you know why that is? Think practically now."

The sergeants murmured amongst each other for a bit.

"...tall grass obscures any dangers," said Blacksword.

"Soldiers are literally at their most vulnerable," said Leatherneck.

Aaron nodded. "Fix up the maps a bit. I want two latrines smack in the middle of each company's tent area."

The sergeants looked at each other. "Is... that... really such a good idea?"

Aaron nodded again. "Think about it - everyone knows where it is, it'll be easier to find at night. When Singapore was still an immigrant nation we set up our own houses, usually around the common latrine since it wasn't practical to be too far off..."

"Is that how things were, growing up?" Blacksword asked. Aaron laughed out loud.

"When my dad was growing up, actually," he explained. "Woke up before dawn to make these peanut cakes that he'd peddle on a bicycle, the whole pre-war deal. He'd tell us stories like that over and over again... that's how the lessons that matter stick in your head."

[Aaron Hong]

***

At long last, the soldiers of the First TransFans Regiment could finally rest.

Tired Tracks was already feeling the strain of being up and at it for more than 10 hours - he lay back on the canvas and felt each segment of his backbone fall into place, after a day of uncomfortable activity, and let out a groan.

"Careful, dude. People are gonna think this is the head," said Laser Rod Optimus Prime, who was setting up one additional piece of equipment - an electric mosquito repellant, which basically heated these little blue mats that let out fumes that were harmful to small bugs. All the soldiers had figured out early on that there were always a few little things they could do to make this camp a little more tolerable, and if that meant bringing some civilisation with them, so be it. Whoever got paired with spiderfrommars got to listen to his personal stereo, and Optimus Prime Rib had a bag of pork rinds for munching away the last hours of the day.

"...are they still hammering out there?" asked LROP. Tired Tracks listened carefully.

"Yeah, they are..." Tracks stuck his head out of the tent carefully, and LROP followed him. "Sounds like it's coming from B Company..."

"It's their head," said LROP, who saw it first. Tracks had to wait for his eyes to get used to the barkness, before he could see the additional canvases being set up on the B Company latrine to bring its height up to 10 feet.

"Ohh boy," said Tracks. "Looks like having someone the size of OPRib finally bit them in the ass after all."

"Yeah, he can barely fit into the tent," LROP added. "So why are they doing the same to ours...?"

The two turned around and saw their own latrine, which was also being modified... but horizontally instead.

"Captain Mecha," said Tracks. "But they only need to get his rear end to fit in there, why would..."

"You don't understand," said LROP. "Sure it's important to hide what you're doing when you're in there, but equally important is hiding the look on your face while you're doing it."

LROP and Tracks mused over this, then crawled back into the tent, and got ready to sleep - their backpacks functioned as pillows while they lay down beside each other and tried to work out where to place their rifles.

"Do you think the sergeants really... do that hazing ritual of theirs, y'know... when we're in the field and all?" asked Tracks.

"What, like setting up fake will'o'de'wisps in the brush or something?" asked LROP.

"I meant like going around snitching your rifles while you're asleep," Tracks replied. "It's a test to see how well you've secured it, of course, but they can make you do fifty pushups if they succeed... or worse..."

LROP thought about this carefully. "Let's see how many of A Company are still awake. I have an idea."

***

Meanwhile, Optimus Prime Rib had some problems getting to sleep, due mostly to his head and legs sticking out of both ends of the tent. He'd had experience sleeping outdoors though, and that helped a lot, plus the fact that he picked a spot near the perimeter meant that the trees were hanging over his tent, and his face as well.

"Psst. You holding up all right?"

OPRib blinked a couple of times, barely making out the outline of someone hanging from the tree above - it became more obvious as that someone descended on a shimmering line, flipped over and landed deftly on the ground.

"spiderfrommars," said OPRib.

"Me mates call me Dave," said the eight-limbed one. "Seriously, you can't possibly sleep like that, you sure you all right?"

OPRib glanced towards the tent post over his shoulder. Tent poles formed the backbone of the tent and thus were pegged in central positions - meaning that while one post stuck between OPRib's legs, he had to sleep with his head to one side to accomodate the other.

"Well, I..."

"Lemme fix that for ye," said spiderfrommars, gripping the top of the tent with one pair of hands while reaching for the line he just hung from with another pair. It was a simple task to dismantle the tent pole and secure this end of the tent via the spiderline to the tree instead.

"Wow, thanks man," said OPRib, readjusting himself back to the middle. "Gee, what were you doing going around at this time of night?"

"I got pegged with sentry duty," spidey repled, brandishing his rifle in two of his arms. "Two hours of this and it's back to sleep. I've been trying to convince them that I can just web some triplines between the tents, but rules are rules, y'know?"

OPRib nodded.

"Say, umm, Rib," spiderfrommars asked. "You seen that Ishin guy around nowadays?"

OPRib had to think about this for a bit. "Not for the whole of today, really... although they counted heads twice and it all checks out. Why'd you ask?"

"The missus Annie was just asking about him the other day," said spiderfrommars. "I've seen the way he looks at her. And damn if it doesn't help me stay awake these two hours, y'know?"

OPRib suddenly realised it.

"You mean Ishin actually fancies her?" he said out loud, as spidey hushed him with three of his hands. "Aww man... but wait a minute, she's been talking to me too so that means..."

"Oh, you're all right," said spidey reassuringly. "Ishin was knowingly trying to win her over at the time, but when she talks to you it's like... umm..." spidey didn't know how to complete that sentence. Like Beauty and the Beast? Like talking to a farm animal? That'll never fly... "...like... well, she kind of treats you like a big kid, same as us."

OPRib nodded at this. "Yeah, she works with a lot of babies in that hospital. And I hear she's got kids of her own."

"She does?" said spidey. Ye gods, those tiny little legs of hers are more flexible than I thought... "Umm... I'm gonna go on me rounds now. You get some sleep, you hear?"

OPRib nodded. "G'nite," he replied, and closed his eyes, trying to ignore the sounds of spiderfrommars deploying more web-lines as he swung away.

***

With all the recruits out of the barracks and well out of TransFans city limits, the city at night was a lot quieter now.

Hardly anyone had much reason to stay up either - the city monorail was an unmanned system, and it took just one moderator to operate the intricate systems of the Ivory Tower that had been put in for the militarisation. There was another unmanned monorail system in the Tower itself - the rolling mailbox system that distributed documents throughout the Tower offices, but that had been shut down for the night, making it so quiet that your ears would ring.

The only moderator on duty at this time was Weirdwolf - it was easier for him since he operated in a different timezone from the predominantly British staff. The job itself basically involved checking every electronic system the Tower was hardwired to, along with the all-important sattelite uplink to that orbital laser they had floating up there for - as it turned out - no specific reason.

After ascertaining that the Tower's security system was fully operational and all gunnery emplacements were loaded, it was time to check with the rest of the city... and that involved the sattelite uplink in a big way. By sticking his dogtags into two slots and punching in a password, Weirdwolf started up the sattelite uplink, which would in turn feed the sattelite's camera data back down to the Tower and give him a view of the city's roads and rooftops in real time.

The gentle hum of the system started up, as Weirdwolf zoomed in a little to check out 'problem spots' like the main road out of town, and the exit ramps connecting it to the information superhighway. As expected, nobody took that route at this time of day, so he panned the camera back into the city - then stopped over the Ivory Tower.

The hum stopped as Weirdwolf noticed something wrong with the view - zooming in a little revealed a Humvee in the parking lot.

And just as Weirdwolf remembered that he didn't have a Humvee, another thought jostling for space in his head was that the humming system he heard earlier couldn't possibly be from the sattelite, but was in fact from behind him.

He turned around, but as someone jumped from behind the rolling mailbox, swung a massive katana and took his head clean off, it was already too late.

[sprunkner]

AARON'S DREAM

or

ALL MY FRIENDS LIVE ONLINE

The computer was awake when Aaron stumbled out of bed at three, his bladder aching. That was weird. I know I put it to sleep, Aaron thought, and reached out for the computer when he noticed the note pinned to the keyboard.

Come into the living room, it said, and someone apparently could not resist adding, [/stalker]

In the living room, he could hear them breathing. He decided it would be better not to turn on the light.

"You love us, Aaron," they said. He knew them all. Shanti and Emvee, Predabot and Besty, Transfans all, just as he had imagined them. Boxy heads, robot eyes, flashing pectorials and all. "We are your friends."

"God in heaven... or science, I'm not prejudiced... you're alive," Aaron whispered to the darkness. "Is everyone there? Yaya, are you there?"

"Yes. I know you wanted to write me in as a suicide bomber, Aaron," Yaya said.

"But I held back," Aaron said. "It was so tasteless that only a total schmuck would mention it and still expect you to be his friend."

"Why is it so hard to put me in the story, Aaron?" Sprunkner asked.

"Cuz your damn handle is gibberish," Aaron replied.

Aaron couldn't tell, but Sprunk, had he actually been writing this, would have agreed that that was the most likely reason. Still, Aaron reflected, the omission was cruel and naggingly painful, much like chlymidia.

"Why are you here?" Aaron asked. "What do you want? Are you..." It was too much to hope. "Are you the real Transfans, come to be my friends in this time of loneliness?"

"Not really," Besty said. "We're actually psychic vampires, taken on the form of your favorite fantasies, come to devour your brain."

"I wanted to be a succubus," Snarl said in a distinctive cockney accent that Aaron had always imagined him with. "Why couldn't your favorite fantasy have been Penelope Cruz?"

"Well, before you eat my brains, I just have a few things to say." Aaron had to think fast. Luckily, he knew from intensive study that psychic vampires, in whatever form they take, are vulnerable to suggestion. He just had to find their personal kryptonite. "I need to tell you that... Emvee, Professor Smooth, Impy-- Christian fundamentalism will save the world."

There was a shriek and a melting noise, kind of like this: schloooooooruppppp.

"Predabot, everyone actually likes you." That one was so crazy it not only melted Predabot's brains, it got Yaya, Shanti, Eline and Sadie all at once.

"Leatherneck and OPR, the South will never rise again." schloooooruppapop.

"Snarlos, I find you cultured and erudite."

"Bloody he--" schlooooorpeee.

He was on fire now. "Sprunk, your child is actually Besty's! BB Shockwave, I don't like your Finno-Uralic language! Spidey, Bon Jovi is all lip-synched! Last Autobot, I don't care if your country discovered potatoes!" And finally, the only one left was Best First. "Best First," Aaron puffed himself up big like a cat, "you have no power over me."

Total disintegration cannot begin to describe what happened. So try this one: boom--kirssshplow!!

As he made his way back to bed, Aaron reflected that, although Transfans was pretty much the free time equivalent of a brain-sucking vampire, it was more like a reliable brain sucking vampire who would always buy you a pint when you were down. In fact, if there were a place where he could let his personal kryptonite show, (Aaron's personal kryptonite, by the way, was having waaaay too much free time) he was glad it was Transfans.

I LOVE YOU ALL.

(Especially Yaya.)

[Aaron Hong]

"Why is it so hard to put me in the story, Aaron?" Sprunkner asked.

"Cuz your damn handle is gibberish," Aaron replied.

And I misspelled it as sprukner the whole time... (Check pages 3 and 4.)

[Aaron Hong]

Got quite a bit of storyline to get over with...

***

After a lot of quiet creeping between the tents, LROP and Tracks had managed to rally shaxper, Shanti, Aux, Predabot and a few other recruits to their cause. They were going to get the jump on the sergeants this time, especially Leatherneck, whom they knew was crazy enough to try something like this.

"So what's the plan?" asked shax.

"Shanti was kind enough to donate these," said Tracks, producing an armful of chains and a padlock. "Predabot's got some room in his tent so we'll chain them there. Shanti and LROP will keep the only two keys, and..."

"...why do you have chains and a padlock anyway?" asked Predabot.

"...for chaining up our rifles, I thought everybody knew that," said Shanti, his mouth going almost as fast as his eyes as he glanced around.

"So it's decided," said LROP. "Everybody, get to work. Predabot, you amaze me sometimes."

***

One logistical question hovering over Camp Vector Sigma, that had never been truly answered, was the location of the ladies' dorm. It went without saying that the women's quarters had to be a seperate building from the men's, and Snarl had decided off the chain to place them in the vacant units directly over the feeding area, ie. the top half of the cookhouse. Which the ladies decided wasn't a real answer, because the curtains were beginning to smell like raw bacon, and turning the wrong tap gave you the kitchen's boiling fat and gravy pipelines if you weren't lucky.

There were worse things that could happen, though...

While Sheba and Nebbie had fallen flat on bed KO'ed after a hard day's cooking, Annie decided that she DIDN'T want to wake up to some hideous smell in her bedclothes, and decided to hit the showers. The fact that two of the kitchen's gas burners had been rigged up as a water heater meant that the showers raised a LOT of steam when they went on, and Annie had to give it a few minutes to cool off a bit.

New recruits were known to be very cautious indeed in the shower, and not just because of the hot water - getting undressed around a horde of men who hadn't had any in months carried implications that should never see print, which resulted in the creation of some very inventive ways of changing clothes. And Annie's prior military experience was nothing but tales of horror that Aaron would bring back, so she didn't feel like taking any chances...

...she took one of her five fluffy pink towels and started tucking it under her t-shirt, making sure to get it all the way around before getting the t-shirt off. This always meant that some extra adjustment of the towel was needed afterwards, and Annie decided to pull her personal gunblade out of its usual hiding place - in her cleavage - and put it aside.

A look into the showers revealed that the steam hadn't subsided - and Annie caught a whiff of burned cookie dough.

Getting her pants off from under the towel was far easier in comparison, despite her measurements - tossing them into the locker actually made an echo. She realised at this point that the steam from the showers was spreading so far out that it got insode the locker, so she closed it before taking another look in the showers - which were STILL too hot, so she just leaned on the wall and waited...

...and suddenly noticed something wrong. As if the blanket of steam had taken a wide circle around the locker room's only entrance.

By the time she thought to reach for her gunblade, it wasn't there anymore.

Shimatta!

And suddenly it was too late for pretty much anything, as two hands grabbed her by the shoulders and slammed her backwards into the tiled wall outside the showers. She tried to push back, but a fatigues-clad body was already holding her against the wall, and she already felt that chiselled face against the side of her head.

Which gave her a pretty good idea who it was.

"Ishin no Ookamisan," she said - with some difficulty, as he'd twisted her right arm directly under her jaw. "I hope you realise that this throws out your entire Asian-superiority theory... more than before, at least."

"What are you talking about?" he replied, making sure his face remained next to her ear. "You don't actually think this is rape, do you?"

"I know Japanese myself so I can guess what you call it," said Annie, just as she raised a leg and tried to knee him in the side - but he'd pressed himself much too close, and connecting the blow with the middle thigh didn't do a lot of harm.

"Oh, my dear, sweet Annisama," Ishin breathed into her ear, his breath unnaturally steady as she tried another kick. "Please stop that, you'll only perpetrate the lie - we both know you're far too good for that monster Aaron Hong, but to have his children as well..."

She tried to force him back, but his rock-hard pectorals had even her body masses flattened against the wall.

"...it's too much for me to bear. You're the only real woman in all of Transfans, Annie... all the others are always going through some kind of random emotional mess, but I know you're the only one who can handle it on your own, without resorting to posting in a place like this and depending on the local lowlife for little more than a digital pat on the back..."

"Then you haven't been here long enough," said Annie.

"No, you haven't been me long enough," said Ishin. He stopped a little, to take in her scent - a mix of peanut oil, sweat and pepper, which didn't really have the effect intended. "I've been in pain, Annie. Watching you lower yourself just to teach these runts a basic survival skill... and if it means lowering myself to the appearance of rape just to take you away from all this, then you're really not leaving me any choice."

She could feel his sword-calloused hands reaching for the front of her towel, and didn't know whether to back off - into the wall - or shove herself forward to jam his hand in place, as impractical as it sounded under the circumstances...

"I just wish I could be as sorry about this as I ought to be, Annie. But I'm well above that... just as you should be..."

And with one hand he ripped her towel off...

...and was treated to a sudden deluge of all the things she kept in her cleavage for safekeeping. Spare hankies, packs of tissues, bottles of spices, bullets for her gunblade, two pens, Post-It pads, notes, spare change, all piling up on the bathroom floor in a steady cascade. Considering that Annie still had on her lingerie (which had several nylon straps to accommodate the extra weight), Ishin no Ookami found himself staring in disbelief for one of the many wrong reasons.

When he remembered to look up again, it was too late for him.

Annie's Phoenix Zord Spirit had finally manifested itself, lifting Annie off the floor with its slowly flapping wings, its triple tails sort of floating behind Annie - giving Ishin the first real shock of his life. If he'd only stop to look at the fires of the Zord Spirit pouring out of Annie's enraged eyes, it would have provided the second shock of his life...

...as Annie raised one leg, fully extended, allowing all that astral fire to swirl and spiral into her extended foot until it was covered in a blinding glare...

...she drew back that foot, and the Zord Spirit within it threw her forward... then she kicked forward, sending all that energy BLASTING out of her toes...

Hitting an already dumbfounded Ishin no Ookami full in the chest, sending him flying backwards and smashing through the wall of the bathroom, going clean out of the building.

The steam finally began to subside, pouring out of the fresh hole in the wall as Annie finally descended back to ground level - the effort had taken a lot out of her, and she had to lean back on the wall on her side, trying to work out what just happened...

...when the cavalry finally arrived, in the form of Nebbie and saysadie, armed with a shotgun and a massive stick respectively. The smash of the wall had drawn their attention, but what they hadn't expected to see was the fatigued Annie sliding down the wall... until Nebbie rushed forward and caught her.

"You all right, Annie? What just happened here?" Nebbie asked.

"Son of a... Nebbie, check this out," said sadie, pointing with her stick at the hole in the wall. "Damn peeping toms got their hands om some major hardware..."

"Not... exactly," Annie panted. "I... He..."

"He?!" sadie raised her stick with both hands and looked around.

"It's all right, honey," said Nebbie, gently taking Annie close into her shotgun-weilding arms. "I got ten rounds in this baby says he won't come by again."

Annie didn't know what to think at the time, but one thing was certain - Ishin would have disappeared by now, well out of the range of any shotgun - and that was it, until she could get her strength back and take him down herself... before Aaron did.

For now, all she could really do was cry in Nebbie's arms.

[Aaron Hong]

And for no apparent reason Aaron Hong woke up with a start.

Not that he'd had a premonition of what had just happened, but he'd always had a problem staying asleep - not to mention getting there. For as long as he could remember, he'd spent all his nights waiting while everyone else went off without him. Being the odd one out had been ingrained into his system.

There wasn't much to do now but let the fatigue drag him back to sleep again - letting his mind go blank was the best idea he had for now, while listening to the sonorous lilts of the TransFans Military Snoring Symphony currently playing all around the campsite. There were no visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads, for certain - just grenades and pins, possibly.

***

As mentioned earlier, the work day in the army really begins well before the sun comes up, but out in the field, the soldiers adopted a more 'free and easy' regimen - anyone who could spare the time and waking hours could brush their teeth and wash up before sunrise, but soldiers on the whole never bothered with that when they were stranded in the wilderness - mainly because sleep had become that much more precious to them.

Officers back in camp also went by the 'free and easy' regimen, albeit for different reasons.

Metal Vendetta had decided on the spur of the moment to enjoy all the privileges his Captain rank brought him, by lounging in a hot bath early in the morning, and dropping off to sleep again till it was time for breakfast... a breakfast of a dozen fat sausages and omelettes, and a jug of milk. It said a lot that Rebis' disapproving glare didn't put off his appetite in the least.

"Oh, don't pretend you don't know what this is about," EmVee chided. "All this time we've been taking our fighter plane on combat runs and training exercises - this time it's a test flight. It's not the weapons or our skills they're looking at, it's the whole plane. We're not expected to make it back alive, you know."

Rebis just gave a shrug, and tucked into his bowl of prime-grade beef mince with broccoli and egg.

"Hey, look, sun's coming up," said EmVee. "Sometimes I wonder about the recruits out there... you know they've spent their first night in tents in the field, don't you?"

Rebis looked up and shrugged.

"We're talking about sheets of canvas held up by ropes and sticks," EmVee elaborated. "It's a good thing the weather outlook's all clear for the next week or so, can you imagine being stuck out there the whole time?"

"Grrr-rrr-rrff."

"Yeah, and us pilots have our own reasons for wanting clear weather, blah blah bloody blah." EmVee took a swig of milk. "I'm still trying to work out why you're still flying with me, it's not like we'll be shooting anything..."

"Rrrr-rarr-rarrf."

"They're testing the plane's performance with a full payload and that includes the copilot and all ordnance?" EmVee looked down at his remaining sausages, and decided to line them up with his fork and knife, until they were perfectly parallel in dual-echelon formation, much like the missiles on a fighter's wings. "I guess that's reasonable... only thing left to do really is..."

"TEN-HUT!"

EmVee's fork and knife and part of his breakfast flew clean out of his hands as he leapt to his feet, then realised that officers didn't do that sort of thing anymore... but it was too late. Jetfire was giggling away as EmVee stood stock-still, and Colonel Smooth walked all the way around the table and stood beside him - with a sausage in his lapel and a fork between his teeth.

"I..." EmVee swallowed his current mouthful. "I'm..."

"No, I quite understand, Rob," said Smooth, taking that fork out with one hand. "Close combat maneuvers can come in handy for pilots sometimes. Someone without my reflexes might not have survived this. Very impressive."

"Thanks, Kev," EmVee replied. The two decided to sit down again to avoid drawing any more attention.

"I couldn't help overhearing your... conversation with Rebis," said Smooth (drawing a raised eyebrow from the Insolent Dog in question.) "Showing concern for the grunts - very unbecoming behavior for a prominent officer like yourself, I would say."

"I... wait, prominent?" said EmVee.

"Haven't you realised it by now?" Smooth helped himself to the milk on EmVee's table. "Flying a different plane from everyone else, being assigned the most difficult training missions and the most unlikely copilot on top of all that... you've actually become quite the celebrity."

Emvee blinked once, and only once.

"And I hear somebody recorded your little attempt at a courtship ritual with Kup_1, which is now no. 5 in youtube's intra-fandom viral video poll."

EmVee spat out a mouthful of something he didn't even remember eating. Fortunately for Smooth, Emvee had aimed it at Rebis.

"Son of a - but they can't do this to me, they - wait a minute, YOU'RE the one making decisions in our air force... and what's the policy on camera phones inside a military installation anyway?"

"Keep it down! Emvee, for the love of..."

Smooth had to reach out and pull Emvee down, addressing him from two inches away at a near whisper.

"Look, those decisions were coming from higher up. I'm stuck between you and them here - they won't even let me in a plane, and lord knows I've been preparing for it. And I know something's not kosher here. All I can tell you is, Besty's carrying on with all this military business pretty much unaffected even though all the neighbouring sites are starting to get very hot an bothered indeed..."

"All? How many are we that close to anyway?" Emvee asked.

Smooth could only heave a sigh. "All right, just the Archive, but you get the idea. And now Besty's suspecting that the Archive sent someone into TransFans to infiltrate the Ivory Tower and kill Weirdwolf..."

"WHAT?!"

Smooth was ready to slap a hand over EmVee's mouth right there and then... but took one look into his eyes, and relented. "It's true. Weirdwolf was on duty in the Tower when someone snuck in... and got him. Used lord knows what to slice clean through his IP and everything around it. TransFans can't recover his data anymore. He's offline."

EmVee didn't feel like eating anymore. Looking down at his plate, he realised that while Smooth got the fork, the plate got his knife - which struck it so hard that the porcelain was split down the middle.

"In Japan they'd say this was a bad omen," Smooth pointed out. "Funny thing is, this usually takes place before the fact, not after..."

EmVee was absent-mindedly clearing the food aside, making the split more obvious. "Maybe it is before," he said to himself.