Battle School Mafia - Scenario

Dink looked down at the scrap of paper that rested on his knees, wondering if the words would sink in through his skin. The message refused to register any other way – he thought osmosis was worth a try.

Command. Of an army. Again.

They had attempted this before, but he'd been able to persuade them otherwise. Convince them that they would all be better off waiting. He'd managed to delay the inevitable, to put it on to another, older future self, but now it seemed the teachers were calling in all favors.

Commander - Dragon. Grey Orange Grey.

This could not stand. Dink shuddered as he thought of the commanders of the other armies, the puppets of the teachers. Manipulated into believing the great lie, that the Buggers were still a threat, that the children were earth's only hope. As if they would rest the fate of all humanity in the hands of a pack of kids who were too smart for their own good. No – the IF was a more humane Herod, whisking those with any potential far from their homelands, so their loyalties would lie, not with their motherlands, but to those they had bonded with in Battle School.

And how would they band together? Games. Battles where winning and losing were everything. Even as Dink thought about what supreme bullshit that was, he gave a little shiver under his skin at the thought of The Game.

~*~*~*~

Dap was uncharacteristically peeved as he browsed the student files, looking for some insight into just what the hell Graff was thinking in constructing this army for Dink Meeker. The kid should have been iced, and would have been, too, if he didn’t show what some called a ‘winner’s edge’. Dap had his own opinion on that – Meeker was insubordinate, and they rewarded him for every act of rebellion because of his inner drive, his genius. In short, the kid had potential that the Battle School was failing to bring out. This was a last ditch effort to make something happen with the guy, before they sent him home.

Dap wondered what he would do with it.

And how did they know of Dink’s ‘inner drive’? Dap frowned, trying and failing to push aside that thought. He didn’t like to admit how heavily they relied on an overblown calculator to understand these kids’ minds, but the fact was the fantasy game, and the psychologists who interpreted the children’s actions within it, were some of the few reliable sources of information on their students. They hadn’t brought these children to Battle School for being soft – most if not all were hard cases, impossible to get next to the way they needed without resorting to sneak tactics.

Even so, many times the psychoanalyst’s reports were so muddy that there was almost no point to having the game at all. Like this one.



Way to cover your ass there, Doc. But what does it mean that this kid, Pinual, is butting his head against an unbeatable game? A game where you died, no matter what, every time? No one really knew.

And now he was in Dink’s army. In Dragon.

A lot of the other kids weren’t much better on the sanity scale – in fact, a few were worse. Borderline personalities, paranoia, blackouts. Nervous twitches, homesickness, volatile rages. Anywhere else, the authorities would take one look at them and send them all to institutions, but here…well, it wasn’t as though they recruited –ordinary- children into Battle School.

No. They weren’t ordinary at all.

~*~*~*~

Thump. Thump.

“Dragon Army.” Thump. “Grey Orange Grey.” Thump.

“Hey, ‘snot so bad. I hear they got a new commander, neh?”

Thump.

“Hey man, cut that out, you want people be sayin’ you gone loco man?”

Thump.

“Dragon’s not –all- losers, sabe? ‘Sides, no victory in being just another asshole who wins all the ti…”

The launchy did not get to finish his no doubt deeply profound insight; one moment his friend had been slumped up against the wall, beating his head against it, over and over, and the next he had his hand around his throat, squeezing.

“Winning –is- victory. The only victory that matters.”

And with that the launchy was shoved, hard in the chest, and sent flying down the low-gravity corridor. His last thought before hitting the slide pole was that his friend was wrong; beating the buggers was the only victory that mattered.

Had everyone else forgotten that?

~*~*~*~

Could you truly immerse yourself completely in a game, and still remember that none of it was real? That there were worlds and worlds still carrying on all around them, threatening to swallow humanity whole? The young soldier didn’t know, but it was an important question, one they asked often. It was insidiously easy to slip into The Game and forget all else – the buggers, the teachers, school. Each other.

The soldier shook their head – sentimentality wouldn’t go far in this place. Still, this soldier had been brought to battle school because they showed an acute perception of humanity. Some called it empathy, and it couldn’t be measured in tests. Understanding people and the situations they were in was an important command trait, but only if you had thick enough skin. Then again, the soldier reasoned, they all had to be tough in one way or another, just to survive this madhouse the International Fleet called a school.

And this transfer to Dragon – couldn’t the teachers see it was a recipe for disaster? Putting what some might call the dregs of the school under a commander who was borderline insane? Oh, they were all brilliant, that much was certain, all were certainly capable, but something about this place, The Game, brought out the worst in them.

Maybe The Game brought out the worst in everyone.

~*~*~*~

It was far past lights out, but in one corner of the barracks, one could still hear the soft click of typing, and if they squinted, they might even see a soft light, as though someone had tried to dim the glow of a desk by hiding under a blanket.

As it turned out, that was exactly what this soldier had done. There were things to do, that could only be done under the cover of darkness, that were more important than study or sleep. Had the soldier not gone to battle school, they might have been very wealthy at a very tender age – computer genius was, after all, a much sought-after skill, and this kid had the creativity to bring off brilliant inventions. Alas, spoils of war. The soldier tried not to think too hard about how the greatest young minds on the planet were being ‘spent’. Tried, and often failed.

The soldier was curious about the minds around them– perhaps more so than the people they belonged to. How did they work, what made them tick, what were their specialties, their strengths and their weaknesses? These characteristics were, fortunately, exactly what the test scores would tell the soldier. You didn’t have to get to know a person to know how smart they were – just look at the numbers. Numbers never lied.

Now the only question was how to get the scores. The soldier had tried every idea they could think of to get around the security system, but to no avail. Still, they were not discouraged – there was always a flaw, always a way in. It just took patience to find. And in the meantime, there was the leak.

The soldier’s first reaction, when they found a document in their hidden trash folder that certainly had not been there before, was a panic so cold and complete that they hadn’t been able to leave their bunk and were sent to the infirmary. The soldier had been caught, that much was clear – they would be iced for sure.

But no adults in their crisp blue uniforms came, all that day, to tell them they were going home. Once the initial panic subsided, the soldier became curious. Who had sent it? Was it a true document or a fake? Was it possible it was from a teacher?

Would they be contacted again?

The document was a list of students that were to be transferred in two days time to Dragon Army. The soldier’s name was on the list. It would be reasonable to assume that one way to know if the information was correct was simply to wait and see, and it would seem that was all the soldier was able to do.

The next communication they received was their assignment. Dragon Army, grey orange grey.

~*~*~*~

“This one,” said Dap, “is too perceptive. This one,” he went on, throwing another file on the table in front of Graff, “is too calculating. And this one, we never should have brought up here. Mind of a terrorist, lone wolf, nationalist…exactly what we don’t need in Dink Meeker’s army.”

Dimak feigned looking up at the ceiling as a poor substitute for rolling his eyes at Dap’s grandstanding. Of course all these problem kids were ones –he- advocated for, and he couldn’t help but notice that Dap had failed to mention any of the children he considered 'his' in the list of unsuitable.

Graff saw the look and gave Dimak a hard stare before turning to Dap. “A terrorist?”

Dap refused to back down in the face of Graff’s mild sarcasm. “Dangerous. The mind game can’t tell us…”

“I’m getting very weary hearing about what the mind game can’t do.”

Now was the time for Dimak to chime in, before Dap and Graff could really get rolling. “If you want to defend your home country, you have to defend the whole planet – the buggers don’t care if you’re Russian, American, Chinese…our soldiers are smart enough to see that.”

“Only,” Dap growled, whirling on Dimak with surprising ferocity, “if they believe the formic threat is real!”

“Enough!” Graff stood up, holding up both hands, and his two subordinates immediately quieted. Dap wore a smug expression, as though he had won the argument, and Dimak scowled all the deeper.

“Enough. They’re all staying. And frankly,” Graff went on, raising his voice over Dap’s renewed (and, Dimak thought, insubordinate) objections. “I’m more considered about this one.” He pointed down at a file. “A rabble rouser. A ring leader.”

To that, Dimak could only shrug. “That’s who we recruit here, Sir. Leaders.”

Graff rubbed absently at his forehead, looking down at his desk. Dimak suspected they weren’t being told everything, that Graff was keeping something to himself and it was eating at him, but he didn’t dare ask. After a moment, he waved his hand.

“Dismissed.”

They saluted, and parted ways, Dimak scowling at Dap’s back as he proceeded down the hall.