Chapter 5~ The Army Sets Out
Too Early
Morning. Early. Sleeping in a tent.
In a tent? What? I thought to myself.
Oh yeah, the war.
“Hello?” Asked a voice. I leapt out of bed and whirled around, ready to kill the Spammer by instinct.
It wasn’t a Spammer, however. It was a Phrynosan, like Riafron. For a moment I thought he was Riafron, but then I noticed there were differences. This one had brown scales, mottled with dark green and black. His eyes were yellow, although I couldn’t exactly remember what color Ria’s eyes were. He was wearing loose clothes, brown. His feet and hands and tail were visible. It was strange looking at his hands. I had never seen Ria outside of his Chozo suit, and the suit had modified claw-hands. While this Phrynosan’s hands were large with claws big enough to kill me, they were nowhere near the size of the modified Chozo suit.
“Can I help you?” I asked at length. He had just been simply standing there, for how long I didn’t know.
“Yez you can.”
“…Who are you?”
“My name would probably be too long and complicated for your primitive human speech. I-“
“Wait, I’m not a human, I’m a Lylatian.”
“You can simply call me Nolat.”
“Okay… what do you want?”
“I want to know what I’m doing here.”
I paused. Did he mean here
literally, as in what was he doing in my tent? Or did he mean here
relatively, as in what are doing in a field? “What do you mean?”
“When do we fight?”
“I… don’t know. The Spammers haven’t attacked us yet.”
“Why are we waiting for them?”
“I don’t know, I’m not the leader.”
“You’re not? You look like the furry human who addrezzed uz last night.”
That took a few seconds to click. “Oh you mean Gideon. No, he’s white, and I’m orange and black, see?” I indicated to my face.
“Yez I obzerved thiz. I did not know whether our leader could change colorz. I have found several other furry humanz like yourself, but none of them were Gideon.”
“Well no, he has a separate tent than me. Anyway, what was it you wanted?”
“I want to know why the war hasn’t started yet.”
“…Let me go get someone who can answer that. In the meantime, you can just take a seat there.”
“Take it where?”
“No, I mean sit on it.”
I backed out of the tent slowly. As soon as I was out of his sight, I began to run for the bench where Gideon had addressed us the day before. It was around six in the morning, I guessed. The sun seemed like it had just come up, and there was fresh dew on the ground. I ran through it, passing around many tents of people I didn’t know. As I suspected, General MewtwoJedi was there, seeming bored. He had the hood of his cloak down, and I could see his face more clearly now. The light was reflecting out of his eyes, like a cat in the night, even though the sun was clearly shining now.
“General MewtwoJedi!” I halted, and saluted him. He did the same, although somewhat informally. Or it may have had to do with the fact that he only had three fingers.
“At ease, McFox. What can I do for you?”
“Well, there’s sort of a weird guy. Just showed up in my tent asking-“
“When we were going to go to war right?”
“Yeah, how did you know?”
He rolled his eyes. “I’ve already had two problems with this guy. A Phrynosan right?”
“Yep.”
“Yeah, he just joined SmashWorld recently, and was enlisted right away, when we saw an example of his martial arts skills. He’s a brilliant fighter, but a bit off the deep end.” We began walking back to my tent. “Not that he’s dumb or anything. I think he had lived on Phrynosa his whole life, and he’s not used to the way things around here work or anything.”
“Yeah. I guess on Phrynosa when you declare war on someone, you go right at battle.”
We reached my tent, to see Nolat sitting contently silent. “Private Nolat!” Barked MewtwoJedi. Nolat jumped to his feet and saluted.
“Private, what did I tell you about barging into tents?!”
“I- I just had a question for the leader.”
“The ‘leader’ doesn’t have time to answer your questions now! Now, return to your tent and keep there until you receive further instructions.”
“Yes sir,” he said humbly, and slowly trudged out of the tent. MewtwoJedi flew back to the bench.
I shrugged, and went back to sleep.
Assignments
Some time later, the loud sound of a trumpet or something like it woke everyone in the camp up. I lazily climbed out of bed, moving rather slowly. When I exited my tent, I saw that almost everyone else had already folded their tents up and were standing at attention in front of Gideon and the Moderators.
Uh-oh, I thought as I folded up my tent as quickly as I could. Gideon was just beginning to speak.
“Hope you enjoyed the sleep-in boys and girls, because that’s the last one you’ll get for a while. Alright, we’ve gotten your individual assignments ready to go. You will get your assignments by order of your last name. If you have no last name, use your first name then. If your name begins with ‘A’ through ‘H,’ report to Slakkichu. If your name begins with ‘I’ through ‘R,’ you will go to Bazooka Lucca. And if your name begins with ‘S’ through ‘Z,’ go to Bumble Bee Tuna. Well, what are you waiting for? Go!”
I waited, knowing that trying to go onto the stage now would result in getting trampled. Everyone was pushing and shoving to get their assignments. I wasn’t particularly thrilled with the idea. Then again, I had made my decision yesterday to stay.
It took a while, but eventually most of the raised area was cleared enough for me to go forward. Several more minutes of waiting, and finally Slakkichu handed me a little piece of paper.
Report to Bazooka Lucca and Gideon at noon today. You will receive further instructions then.
I was somewhat confused, and then Gideon walked up to the podium again. The crowd was immediately silent. I did note the respect everyone gave him.
“Now, just so there’s no confusion, you are going to partnered up with someone who will be going on your mission. You do not get to choose your own partners. You are, however, responsible for your partner, as they are for you. If you note anything strange about your partner, or if something happens to them, you are to immediately report it to the nearest superior. You will also share a tent with your partner, as we can’t lug around that many individual tents everywhere. There will also be no male-female tent-buddies, so don’t even think about it. And for you women in our midst, if anyone tries anything on you, you have our permission to zap, burn, freeze, or do anything else you feel like to someone if they do start acting funny.”
Loud groans rose up from somewhere in front of me and to the left. I personally didn’t care.
Waiting…
And so, for the rest of the morning not much went on. Not, at least, until the flying members took off. They caught everyone totally by surprise. All of a sudden, roughly a little less than half of our army simply lifted into the air, whether by wings, or psychic powers, or something else. They flew up all around us, blocking sunlight for a moment, and then letting it through until another blocked it again. All kinds of flying creatures of every sort lifted into the air, and followed whichever person they had been instructed to. Some went with Bumble Bee Tuna, some with Giygas, and some with MewtwoJedi Saiyan. It was an amazing spectacle to witness.
I simply stood there gaping like an idiot for several minutes, but I didn’t care. It was awesome to watch. And finally, seeing them separate into three groups and heading in different directions was awe-inspiring. I noted that one group, the largest of the three, was heading northeast, towards the city.
Then, at around 11:30, large, armored vehicles showed up from north of us, from the city. Amorasaki, XDadepsak, Slakkichu, and Koopaking each lead several hundred people onto the assorted vehicles, and got in themselves.
I looked around, to find that suddenly a lot of people were gone. Almost everyone was gone. There were about ten of us left. I sauntered over to the others. The others being ZeldaFox, Arrow, CyberWolf, Shy Guy, Osco, Kirby King, Thundermistress, Rudy, and one other person I didn’t know.
“Why do I get the feeling I’m not going to like this?” I groaned loudly.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, doesn’t it strike you as odd that
everyone except for us ten has already left?”
“Yes,” said the one person I didn’t know. “I was noticing the same thing. Perhaps our powers were chosen for a reason.”
“Or maybe Gideon feels like because he knows us personally, he can treat us differently. I don’t want anything better than what anyone else has.”
Several agreements passed around the group, until Shy Guy picked up what we were talking about. “Hey, why don’t you want better stuff?”
I sighed, “I didn’t say better stuff, I said ‘treated differently.’ I don’t want Gideon to think he has to treat us better because he knows us.”
“I do not think that is the case,” the brown-haired human said. “I do not know Gideon personally, and yet I am still here.”
I looked him over. He seemed to be about average height, for a human. A little taller than me, as all humans were. He wore a long green robe, but instead of a brown or black color that is common, his robe was a brilliant shade of emerald green. His hair was sand-colored, and he carried a large cane or a staff, with a shining green jewel sitting on top of it contently.
And so, we sat around, nervous and bored at the same time, while Gideon simply sat there and talked to some of the other Mods. Finally, he motioned for us to go and speak with him.
. So just sit tight and hopefully I can update soon 
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