Preparing for war. Games. [Rina]

[Anonymous]

"Rise and shine, it's game day."  

"Can't wait."

"I can sense the excitement from here."  He felt her smile.

"I'm dancing on the inside, I promise."

Alesku had always loved the war games.  Of course they were serious, and of course they were good training; but anyone who didn't find them fun clearly had some problems.  He didn't always like to remember the Edani wars... but sorting through the memories and inputting the useful details as programming made it all a little easier.  It made sense of things. It gave him control.

He took his run and shower early and made his way to the programming room he had reserved for himself and Eftwyrd, his go-to patch guy for the SVR programs.  The room was wall-to-wall terminals.  Stations around the perimeter held chairs kitted out with headsets, plugs and ports designed to connect to skin.  The central table held the admin connectors.  Alesku didn't bother to hook up physically; a quick electrical impulse would work once they wanted to go interior.

While he waited for Eftwyrd, Alesku sipped at a cup of tea and started to rough out the details he'd planned.  It was a little different, composing SVR and KVR, in script and execution.  Kinetic simulations worked real muscles, and required some real space; they'd also usually admit no more than three participants before the reorientation scripts started to skew.  Stationary sims were best for tactical games and games with particularly complex or limiting settings.  Participants would all need to plug in to modified ports and headsets.  SVR was particularly useful because it gave Candidates a taste, if just a little one, of the kind of complete immersion they'd find in the Network.

He brought the plan thus far up on the central terminal screen.

The terrain he'd roughed out included a stretch of desert, a small forest, and an abandoned military compound.  A grid flipped up onscreen, complete with the detail of proposed planted mines and available weaponry.  They'd limit the program to physical combat, as always; that way the pre-Stage-Four Candidates could take part.

Alesku heard the door whoosh open and turned from his perusal of the screen to lift a hand in greeting.  "Hello, Alaric.  Don't worry, you're not late, I'm--"  He checked the time blinking on the wall.  Seven minutes to eight.  "--early.  What do you think?  All I have so far is some rough terrain, I'm still working on the game specs." Sometimes they ran a modified capture-the-flag, sometimes they went more complex.  Maybe he'd add some interior agents, he'd got a decent set of Edani soldiers somewhere.  "And tell me what you think of the explosives code, I did a mod yesterday."

[Anonymous]

Alaric wasn't totally sure what Alesku liked for breakfast, but, he figured muffins were safe. Everyone liked muffins. And he had been too excited to sleep much, so he made fresh muffins. He was meeting Alesku to help program the war game simulations. It was like a giant WoW game. With guns and candidates.

Pressing the button to the door, Alaric stepped inside, smiling at the Pilot Royal. Then blinked at Alesku's assurance he wasn't late. He hadn't thought he was late. He glanced down at his watch and was reassured he wasn't late, "I brought muffins." He absently set the box containing them and leaned over the screen, far more interested in reading the code then he was in the food.

He scanned over what Alesku had so far, nodding a few times as he read it over, paying special attention to the mod. Once he had finished, the alien leaned back, running his hand through his hair. He hadn't spiked it into the hawk today, not sure if Alesku would really approve of that, "That is really elegantly done. Should work really well."

Snagging a muffin now, Alaric looked back at the date, pondering it over in his head, "I was thinking we should do a capture the flag scenario. The candidates don't seem to work together well. Maybe three teams? 4? Or one team can be run by us, to keep them busy."

[Anonymous]

"Hm."  Alesku leaned back in his seat, tea in hand, and considered the code.  He found Eftwyrd's praise just a little flattering; he'd worked hard on the scripts, and... oh, hell.  Flattering.  "Thanks," he said, reaching over for a muffin and setting aside the tea.  He pondered the other Pilot's suggestion, rolling the warm muffin over and over in his fingers.  

Three teams... hm.  Might work, or it might degenerate into chaos.  Alesku preferred to keep to solid blocs, but as Edani terrain grew more and more terraformed, they really should start to think about guerilla action.  Still, best for the Candidates to learn teamwork.

"Maybe two teams," he said at last, and reached forward to point at the warehouse and the wooded area.  "I'm not sure I set up the terrain well enough to accommodate three bases; as is, whoever's got the military base has a seeming advantage.  And what do you think about leaving out psychic abilities?  We... could let them bring in their abilities, but last time it was chaos."  Alesku shook his head.  

"I agree we should run a team ourselves, that's a great idea.  Your constructs last time were pretty impressive.  Two teams okay with you?  It might help with cohesion, and last time one of the teams died off pretty quickly, which reminds me, how do we want to deal with mortality this time...?"  He grimaced at himself and shook his head, aware that he'd just launched into far too many details.  He cut himself off by biting into the muffin.  Alesku had become just a little too used to making unilateral decisions; that was the danger of his new rank, and why he'd particularly wanted to work with Eftwyrd this time.  He respected him, and he'd have to slow down and plan something in tandem.  

"Well done, Alesku."

"Mm... ha, ha."

"Good muffins, by the way."

[Anonymous]

Alaric carefully at his muffin in small chunks, pulling off a bit before eating it from his fingers as he listened to Alesku, his focus on the screen, "Bigger teams can make it harder for the kids to learn to work together. They'll be more likely to branch off into the groups they already have. Plus more teams gives more candidates a chance to lead."

Alaric reached out with his clawed hand and tapped a line of code, "We need to fix this. That will get wonky if we get too many people in that area. And let's so as much outdoor environmental as possible. Most of these kids have never seen the sun, let alone been outdoors. It will be good practice for them. Maybe? I donno." Alaric's pale skin flushed a slightly darker blue, feeling a little embarrassed for speaking so much, "No powers. Gods, that was a nightmare last time. And some of the kids have weird abilities."

He took another bite of muffin, his blush darkening at Alesku's praise, "Thanks. I have some new ones I've been working on. They aren't done, but I don't have a lot more to do on them. As for mortality, I think that once you die, you stay dead. Make them really work together or the team will get over whelmed and crushed."

His blush didn't have time to fade before it was back at the muffin compliment. But Alaric gave Alesku a bright, fang-toothed smile, tail flicking in pleasure, "I'm glad you liked them. I thought they turned out well. I almost added went with poppy seed, but I like blueberries best."

[Anonymous]

Hm.  Alesku nodded at the section of code Alaric and pointed and took a moment to go in mentally and tag it.  Later, they could touch it up.  He disengaged; a faint blue spark arced between his hand and the connection port a few inches away.  He shook out the slight tingle he always felt when he used his electrokinesis, and retrieved his muffin, pinching off a quick bite around a particularly blueberry-heavy area. He paused to wipe crumbs from his beard, then continued.

"We've got plenty of landscape sims, but it's not the same as the real thing, is it?"  Alesku shook his head.  "Confidentially, I've been pressuring Xico to negotiate with the Edanis for terraforming tech, but..."  He slid his muffin a quarter-inch to one side on the table, centering it between his hands.  "It's never easy.  Anyway, good on mortality, that's what I was thinking.  And good on the blueberries."  

"Was that a joke, Alesku?"

"Maybe."  

He glanced at the other Pilot, noting the subtle change in color.  He'd never felt the need to ask, but assumed the darkening was a blush.  Eftwyrd took compliments about as well as he did.  For some reason, Alesku had always found involuntary responses like that a little endearing; they marked sincerity, perhaps.

"--and we can talk about teams later; I ought to consult Roman on that anyway.  For now, let's shore up that area and start thinking about what sorts of weapons we're going to give them.  Materials scattered in the forest and the base, like last time, we can do a quick surface reconfig.  Blasters, certainly, but do we want to give them shields?  We'll need to work on the shield decay rate versus blaster capacity, we overlooked that last time.  We probably shouldn't let this thing drag on to the sixteen-hour mark again..."

[Anonymous]

The spark drew Alaric's attention, all three of his eyes focusing on it. The third eye could read actually see the lingering traces of psychic energy crackling there. Alaric was a little jealous of Alesku's ability. To be able to have such fine manipulation. Alaric couldn't even imagine, he was all power, no grace. And to be able to interact with machines like that....made Alaric's nerdy little soul sigh wistfully.

"I don't know how likely they are to ever have to deal with an actual environment, but I think that will be the biggest shock to their systems when having to deal with it. Hmmm...maybe we should have some weather. Rain or wind or something." He carefully avoided commenting on any politics with Alesku, not wanting to set off a tirade of any kind, "I'm glad you liked the blueberries."

The flush was starting to fade a little now and he nodded his head, "Glad you liked the blueberries. But with this group, they seem to be doing well as individual kids or small groups. But I want them to learn to have to work with people they don't like. Or everyone dies."

The comment about getting Roman's approval for the number of teams got a nod from Alaric. Whatever would work out best was fine with him, "If we don't give them any shields, then we would either have to have multiple scenarios or have a respawning mortality. Otherwise the games will be over far to quickly. The gracies wont have the combat skills yet to hold up to the later years that have been trained with blasters and how to not get shot."

Alaric had always been thankful that unlike humans, his race had been built for the hunt. Because as a candidate in war games, being unpopular, tall and really pale had made him a lovely target. But he was fast and quick and had learned very quickly how to avoid getting shot, "But yes. We do need to make sure the shields aren't staying up so long. The shields could be low-powered, only able to take a few shots. Let the young ones learn a lesson or two before they just get shot."

Taking another moment to shew on his muffin, Alaric leaned his hip against Alesku's chair, "I think we should give each team a special weapon or two. Maybe a big gun or grenades or something. Make them figure out the best way to use it. But only have a very small number of those in the system. We could even give one or two to our team. So if they can take the enemy down, they can get their hands on a reward."