(Will's PoV)

    I tripped and fell backwards. The opposing side was approaching. My vision was being enclosed by guns pointed at me. I'm not ready for war, I pleaded. "I don't know what I'm doing."

    "I don't know what you're doing either," I heard.

    My neck jerked. I opened my eyes to see Logan. "Hi, uh, sorry," he said. "I just thought I should wake you up. Sgt. Blake said we'd be there in about twenty minutes."

    I rubbed my eyes. "Already?"

    "Yeah," he replied through a yawn. "I just woke up too. I think pretty much everybody slept the entire time we were in the air."

    Daniel, who was sitting next to him, opened one eye. "I guess that's what happens when you've been sleep deprived for six weeks."

    "Here, here," Trevor agreed from the pair of seats behind them. Clayton moaned something to show that even he thought Daniel was right.

    "Should we wake up Matteo?" Logan asked.

    I looked over to see my best friend sound asleep with his head resting on the window.

    "No, not yet," I told him. "I think he deserves a little more," I added, reflecting on the events surrounding the thunderstorm.

    "I feel bad about what happened Sunday," Logan apologized. "I wasn't trying to draw attention to him. I just wanted to know what was wrong." I couldn't be mad at Logan. This was all Connor's fault.

"It was nice of you to stand up for him," Daniel told me.

Nice. That word seemed to haunt me.

Daniel went on. "And you made a good point, about everyone being afraid of something."

"Yeah," Logan said. "I'm afraid of snakes, blood, and ledger lines above the staff. That's where basses go to die." After looking around for a moment, he realized something else. "I'm hungry."

Daniel laughed a little.

"But I am though," Logan continued. "I haven't eaten all day." He dug around through the seat pockets. "When Sgt. Blake said we were gonna fly commercial to draw less suspicion. I was so happy because I flew commercial when my family went to Disneyland when I was ten and there were these nice ladies who gave us snacks. There's no snack giving ladies here. There isn't even any peanuts in the seat pockets. Just a blank to do list and a barely sharpened pencil."

    One man's trash is another man's treasure, I thought to myself. "Can I see those?" I asked, suppressing a smile.

    Logan shrugged and handed them to me.

    "I thought the flight would be nicer too," Daniel said. "Or at least cleaner." He grimaced as he tried to dust off his seat. After a few seconds he froze and his eyes seemed to bulge out.

    "Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew," he repeated. "There is gum...on my chair...I don't know how long it's been there...that is so disgusting...I need to wash my hands." He bolted upright.

    "Daniel, sit down! The plane is landing," Sgt. Blake yelled.

    Daniel tried to protest but it was no use. While he continued to freak out about germs, I examined my paper and pencil. I never brought anything like that to Basic Training, so I hadn't gotten to draw in a while. I wasn't super great at it, but I liked it. It would at least give me something to do while the other guys wrote and received letters.

    Was I allowed to take stuff from here? I wondered. No one else was gonna use it, but still...

    I hid it under my shirt just to be safe.

    As the plane landed, I put my hand on Matteo's shoulder. "We're here."

    He stirred a little before fluttering his eyes open.

    "You all right?" I asked.

    He tried to speak, but he couldn't bring himself up to say yes, so he just shrugged. He wasn't really shaken up anymore, but that was because all of his fear now turned into more hatred towards Connor. I couldn't really blame him though. When you purposely hurt someone, you deserve to be hated.

    We grabbed our bags and headed off the plane. Daniel was the last one out because he had to grab his pocket sized hand sanitizer before doing anything.

    We had to walk a ways before reaching our final destination, but it gave me some time to take in our surroundings. It reminded me of the Emerald City from the Wizard of Oz. Everything here was so green. Tall grass, towering trees with full, bright leaves, thick vines. It was such a contrast to everything I had seen in Nebraska, especially my tattered and dying front lawn.

    "Where exactly in China are we?" Landon asked.

    "Guilin," Sgt. Blake responded.

    "Oh, that's known for its jungle terrain and mild climate," Justin informed.

    "Oh my God," Clayton muttered.

    Sgt. Blake just continued. "Yes, and there's a small American base here. We're supposed to guard it. Which is good for you guys because defense fighting is much safer."

    There were plenty of relieved sighs. Matteo looked happier than he had in weeks.

    Within another five minutes we found the base. He wasn't kidding when he said small. The whole thing looked only about twice the size of our bedroom at Basic Training.

    "My house is at least eight times the size of this," Isaac observed.

    Sgt. Blake rolled his eyes. "It doesn't need to be big. We're the only platoon that's using it."

    "Wait, so we're gonna be the only ones here?" Trevor asked.

    "Kind of," Lt. Jason replied.

    Tristan cocked an eyebrow. "What do you mean 'kind of',"

    Sgt. Blake seemed to struggle to find the right words. "We're not the only ones."

(Landon's PoV)

    His statement was intriguing. Not the only ones. We could have asked him what he meant--oh wait no. Tristan already did that and the answer wasn't any clearer. We decided to take matters into our own hands and ran inside.

    The barracks were very similar to the ones at Basic Training. Thirteen bunk-beds were placed against the wall with an open space in the middle. We continued to look around for anything out of the ordinary.

    After a few minutes of scoping out the barracks, Matteo folded his arms. "You know, I bet there isn't even anything in here for us to find. I bet Sgt. Blake just wanted us to get in here faster so he could put us to work--'

    Felix gasped from down the hallway. He and Kent could barely contain themselves between their spasms of excitement.

    "Could it be?"

    "It is."

    "It really is."

    We followed their voices down a short hallway to see something we hadn't seen in six weeks.

    "A girl!"

    This girl was rather thin and fair skinned. Her golden blonde hair was piled up into an unkempt ponytail.

    "Okay, okay, no curves," Kent observed. "And no chest...whatsoever." He and Felix took a moment to frown. "But hey it's a girl. We'll take it."

    They ran towards her room, although she was too distracted from having her eyes buried in a stack of papers, all of which were dropped once they had their hands on her though.

    The rest of us crammed into the room to see what was going on. The girl desperately tried to squirm out of their grasp, but they had an iron grip on her. She tried stepping on Felix's foot and when that didn't work, she kicked him in the shin. Kent made an attempt to kiss her, but she kneed him in the balls before he could.

    "What the hell?" she screeched.

    Both boys were lying on the floor in pain.

    "Who do you think you are, hitting on me like that? I don't even know you, much less like you." Her hair whipped around as she turned to the rest of us.

    God, I love blonde hair.

    I needed to make my move fast in order to appear confident. "Well then, let's get to know each other, blondie. What's your name?"

    "None of your business," she huffed.

    Justin shuffled through a few papers on her desk. "It says here that it's Holly Zimmermann. My German teacher had the same surname," he observed.

    "That explains a lot," Tristan muttered.

    Holly kept scowling, but I continued.

    "Well Holly, I'm Landon Price, otherwise known as the man of your dreams."

    She scoffed. "You're not a man. And if I dreamt about you, I would never sleep."

    A couple of the guys around me laughed, but I was determined to impress her.

    "Well, based on your bloodshot eyes, I'd say you don't get much anyway."

    She stepped closer to me. "You wouldn't be so cocky if I gouged your eyes out with a scissors."

    I smirked. "My eyesight's bad anyways."

    She opened her mouth to retaliate, but Gavin cut her off. "You know, you should probably be nicer to us, seeing as you probably need us to protect you."

    Her whole body was tense as she spoke. "I don't. But see this," she opened one of her cabinets. "Look at all these medications, and I know which combinations of them are lethal. It would be a tragedy if I were to say, accidentally...shove them down your throat!"

    She looked around at each one of us. "Don't fuck with me."

    She didn't have a door to slam, but she made it clear that she wanted us out of her room.

    "Well she seems lovely," Tristan said sarcastically once we got in the hallway.

    Lovely wasn't the right word. Frankly, I'm not sure there was a word to describe her overall presence. I could never get a girl like that by being vulnerable or insecure. I just needed to feign more confidence.

(Tristan's PoV)

    Gavin sat down on a bunk, claiming it as ours. "Can you believe it?" he mused. "A girl."

    "Yeah," Landon said absentmindedly.

    "And it's weird," Gavin continued. "Even though she's not very bubbly or sweet or feminine in any way, it's still," he struggled to find the right word, "interesting having her here, just cuz she's a girl. I mean I haven't seen one since Basic Training."

    "Me neither," I agreed. Then it dawned on me who I should tell about this. I grabbed my pencil and paper out of my bag.

Dear Kierra,

You'll never believe what I saw today. A girl! An actual girl. I think she's a nurse or something cuz she was in a room with a bunch of medicine, but whatever, she's a girl. She seems really aggressive and violent, so not a typical girl, but a girl. I haven't seen girls in six weeks. Six whole weeks! That's a long time. I've been seriously girl deprived.

Oh yeah and we start fighting tomorrow.

From,

Tristan

(Connor's PoV)

I poked at the MRE breakfast in front of me. The plastic spoon couldn't get it to move too much though.

Aaron sat down next to me. "Any good?"

I shrugged. "No idea. Haven't tried it yet."

He tilted his head to the side. "What is it anyway?"

"I'm not sure," I replied. It was in a bowl. "Maybe oatmeal?"

Aaron managed to get a little of it on his spoon and tasted it. After a few seconds, he made a face. "Disgusting," he decided.

"Well that settles it." I pushed mine away from me. "I'm not even that hungry anyway."

"Nervous?" he asked.

"No," I said quickly. Aaron's eyes flashed to the analog clock and back. "I mean, Sgt. Blake did say we were only gonna be defense fighting," I went on. "That can't be that hard."

"Yeah," he agreed, although a little half-heartedly. "It's probably just hiding behind barricades and not letting anyone pass." His breathing grew more steady as he spoke. "We should probably be focusing on the bigger problems, like food."

I laughed in agreement. "Yeah, too bad MREs are preservable."

Aaron thought for a moment. "Wait, doesn't peanut butter have a crazy long shelf life?"

"You're right," I realized.

"We should get someone to send it to us," he said.

"Like who?" I reminded him.

His face fell at my point, but just before all hope was lost, a familiar high-pitched voice piped up from behind us.

"I love peanut butter!" Sean exclaimed.

"We were just talking about how it would be useful and edible," Aaron told him. "We couldn't make sandwiches since there's no bread, but we do have crackers. That would at least be a little filling."

"I should ask my parents to send us some," he said, smiling. "I'll go do that quick before we leave." He ran off to his bag. Aaron smiled at him, but his posture started to grow stiffer as the silence increased.

"Are you sure you're all right?" I asked him.

"Yeah," he responded, although he sounded uncertain.

"Cuz fighting really shouldn't be all that bad," I assured him.

"No, it's just..." he sounded more uncomfortable than scared. "It's not that."

(Holly's PoV)

     "Holly, that is the end of story," Blake said irritably.

    "But that's not fair," I shot back.

    He stormed into his office and I followed right behind him. This was not the end of discussion.

    "Why can't I fight?" I asked for the tenth time this morning. "I've done research. I've studied war strategies-"

    "I don't have time for this," he cut me off. "You haven't even been through Basic Training. The guys have."

    "Were they any good?" I challenged.

    "Not the point," he articulated. "You're not built for war. You're tiny."

    "I am not tiny," I protested. "I'm average sized."

    "For a girl," he added. "I doubt you're even more than 110 pounds. Face it, I bet I could bench at least two of you."

    I groaned in annoyance. Those guys had no idea what they were doing and they were the ones being entrusted with weapons.

    "Holly, face it. You're a girl, you're not meant for this." His tone was demeaning. "Your job is to be a nurse, so get back to the infirmary now. You still need to copy the boys' medical records."

    I folded my arms. "You're not the boss of me."

    He smirked at me. "I'm in charge of this base and everything in it. That includes you."

    Fuming, I headed back to my room. Once inside, I began pacing around. I could hear the guys talking from down the hall. I couldn't make out what they were saying, but I knew it wasn't serious. They couldn't understand that this wasn't a joke.

    They're probably going to get hurt, I thought to myself, then I remembered that I needed to copy their medical records. As I transcribed, I tugged on the end of my dress with my left hand. This stupid white dress that served no other purpose than to signify that I was a girl.

    Why did it matter anyway? I probably knew more about being in the military than all of the guys here combined. When I signed up, I thought I would be in combat, not the infirmary. I was a fighter, not a caregiver.

    I sighed as I continued to write down health information. Out of all the things that could be done to help the war, I was doing paperwork.

    I was so useless here.