The Great Belligerency [Round 4: Static]

Originally posted on MSPA by Pick Yer Poison.

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Reinhardt was filling out a few electronic forms when he heard a brief argument outside his chamber doors. Recognizing Phil's voice arguing with those of his guards, he put the form he was working on neatly and waited for the doors to open. A few moments later, an irate Phil barged in, followed by the guards. "Hey, you can't go in there without--"

Reinhardt held up one of his hands, silencing the two armored lackeys. "He's cleared for entrance. You two may leave now." The guards hesitated, then nodded and left, the doors closing behind them. Reinhardt turned his attention to Phil. "What do you need?"

"Do you have any alien captives?"

Reinhardt stared. "What kind of question is that? Why would I keep any of those scum alive?"

Phil shook his head. "So you don't?"

"No! What do you need living aliens for?"

Phil glared back. Reinhardt could feel his stare through the helmet. "The recruits you told me to teach are worthless right now, Reinhardt. They're cowards. They may not look it to the untrained eye, but I can tell at a glance; these humans will take too long to adjust to killing to teach them on the battlefield. I have many ways to teach them to fight, Reinhardt, but I have only one way to teach them to kill." Phil paused. "If you don't have any living aliens, do you at least have a large bag?"

Reinhardt shrugged, slightly nonplussed. "That's something to ask the quartermaster."

Phil nodded. "A'ight. I'll be back in an hour, hour and a half." He walked back out, and after a minute Reinhardt picked the form back up and continued filling it out.

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Twenty-six minutes later, Phil walked into the training hall carrying a cube about the size of the average adult head. He pulled off his helmet, revealing his massively scarred face. A group of fifteen recruits snapped to attention, raising their hands to their foreheads and trying to avoid eye contact without appearing to. "Sir!"

Phil nodded. "At ease." The recruits lowered their hands and relaxed slightly. "Sorry for taking so long. I ran into an ambush about two minutes' walk from the training hall." The recruits blinked confusedly. "It took me an extra twenty minutes to find the survivors, hence the wait."

One of the recruits raised a hand. "Permission to speak, sir!" Phil nodded. "Sir, what exactly is in that storage space?" Phil simply grinned and tossed the cube on the ground. It expanded rapidly, and a handle appeared on one side. The commando yanked the side open and pulled out a tied-up humanoid alien.

The creature was similar a housefly, with large compound eyes and brutally mangled wings. Even without pupils, the eyes still looked pleading. "P-Please, don't kill me! I have a family! My daughter, she--" Phil silenced him with a single shot in the side of the head. A couple of screams were heard from inside the cube, and the recruits flinched. Several of them turned a few shades greener. Phil's grin got visibly wider, and his eyes displayed a malicious glint.

"Recruits, today, you will be learning what I have just shown you. This is something you will all need to learn before I am willing to send you out to fight nonhuman scum. This, recruits, is how you KILL!" Phil yanked out another tied-up alien; this time, a lizard-man. He shoved him in front of the recruits. "Shoot him!" Two obeyed, but missed horribly; the rest froze up. One vomited and ran out of the room. The lizard-man made a dash for the door; Phil shot him in the back of the head, and he fell.


He then fired a shot just to the left of the head of one of the twelve recruits who hadn't fired a shot. "Why didn't you fire when your commander ordered you to? Why?" All the color drained out of the soldier-to-be's face, and he shook his head, mouthing nonsense. "WRONG ANSWER!" Phil barked back at him. He pulled a four-armed alien with beige scales all over his body out of the box and shoved it at the recruit. "NOW SHOOT!" This time the gun fired, about fifteen more shots than were actually needed, but the alien dropped to the floor and writhed for a moment before Phil took the killing shot. "Never leave your opponent in a position where he feels pain when he dies! Killing him proves that he has been triumphed for the last time in his life. He does not need to regret that." He pulled another lizard-like humanoid, this time a female, from the box, and shoved her in front of the recruits. "Now SHOOT!"

This time about half obeyed. Seven aliens later, they were all shooting without hesitation. Phil's mad grin never left his face for a minute. Before, they were soldiers. Now, they are killers.

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After twenty minutes of a very, very successful combat practice, Phil decided that nature was calling rather badly. He excused himself from the training hall and went to find the bathroom. When he happened upon it, he heard a faint noise from inside. That sounds like...someone crying? He slipped his gun off his shoulder and kicked open the door. The recruit who had run off looked up at him blearily from his seated position on the top of the unused toilet. His face was covered in tears and he quickly turned his head, trying to wipe them off. Phil put his gun away and put his hand on the boy's shoulder in a fatherly way. "It's alright, son. War is not for everyone."

The former recruit gazed up at him tearfully. "I'm sorry, sir. I...I just couldn't do it."

Phil shook his head calmly, the scarred and pitted face showing a hint of actual human kindness for the first time in a long while. "We all make mistakes. Maybe yours was trying to be something you didn't really want to be."

The boy nodded sadly. "I think you're right. To be honest, I was a bit afraid you'd take this...a bit differently." He paused, biting his lip. "You're scary out there, sir. I thought you would...to be completely honest, I thought you might kill me."

He jumped when Phil laughed in response. "You remind me of my son. He thought I was going to kill him when he told me he didn't want to be a soldier. For a minute I felt like it, too!" Phil's laughs died down, but he continued to smile kindly. "But it occurred to me that not everyone needs to be good at the same things. As long as you stay true to yourself and loyal to your cause, you'll never go wrong." You might get a lot of grief and a bit of pain, but still... The boy nodded, a slight smile glimmering on his face. Phil returned it. "Now clean yourself up and scoot out. You may still want to take your rifle with you; I did get ambushed within the human bloc. Seems Vanhart's separation hasn't progressed as far as he thinks it has." Phil backed out of the bathroom, closing the door behind him. "I'd best be off now."

When he reached the training hall doors he stopped for a moment, struck his forehead with the palm of his hand, and walked away in search of an unoccupied bathroom.