Code Zulu Alpha: Nerd in the Apocalypse!

I could maybe chalk it up to the Mayor's age or just the mountain of things he had to juggle every single day, but this fire just happened yesterday, he wouldn't be able to forget it just like that.

Still, it took a few keywords like the copy of the footage and that it'd be no problem for him to actually remember what occurred that night, but he was still more focused on having us dissect his plan of storming the other connecting stations.

And he pointed at the projector screen while holding his marker:

"Fortunately, while the area to clear out is larger, it seemed that it has no flesh walls or those bouncy huge masses running around—or any of those miniature abominations running around."

"Seemed?"

"I mean— We'll never actually know once we're in there, right? We tried to thin down the herd below and never tried to get up—but yeah… despite the noise we made, none of the ones up top tried to get down on our level."

"Hmm~ Some of them tend to stay in one place even without anyone telling them to do so."

"Yeah. We've encountered a few of those as well—sticking to a perimeter of sorts—but they do tend to get riled up when they see uninvited visitors."

"And that's when the Hokey Pokey starts."

"Exactly."

"But yeah, if this is as easy as we thought, it'd be a pretty cut-and-dry run, right? Why would we need this meeting then? Is there something you're saving up for last?"

"..."

"Iskoh?"

Mayor Iskoh glanced at me silently for about seven seconds before he had this small brigade of young-ish adults stand in attention to the side. They were around 70% dudes and all of them were equipped with the usual meta, but it didn't take long before I figured out what Iskoh wanted to convey to me.

He cleared his throat and glanced at my own young-ish brigade before opening his mouth, "As you can see, I've been training the next generation of our future front liners as well and I think that this would be the best chance to have them imitate what your group and Morales' group did yesterday."

My face quickly showed displeasure, "How so?"

"In simpler terms, I'd like us to throw them off the nest so they'd learn how to fly but if you want a little bit of specificity, I'd like to switch the role of front liners and the back line for this run."

"You know this is an important run, right?"

"I do, but even with the risks, we can't coddle them forever. I've heard of your Hell Week but let's be honest, it was still done in a very safe space. We all know that you're very dangerous but you wouldn't actually kill them. Hurt them, sure… Then again, the risk of death's not really there."

"Uh-huh… I mean…"

"See? You agree with me. It's hard for me too but even if they've been going on multiple runs by themselves before, they should still be doing risky things for everyone. You have an all-star team and I have my own, but the thing is, I need more—and to do that, we have to do this."

I wanted to disagree but I couldn't so I let out a huge sigh before I opened my mouth, "What's the limit then? Till one of them dies?"

Iskoh shook his head, "No."

"No what?"

"I mean— that should be a criteria but it's until they ask for help."

I was slightly relieved, "Gotcha—"

"But if they actually asked for it, they'll be off the squad and be stuck guarding the gates forever. Or you know, until they grow a set and finish the mission no matter what."

"I thought this was just supposed to be training for them?"

"We need good soldiers."

"You're having your first shipment soon—"

"It'd be nice to have my own. They already agreed to it."

"Oh yeah?"n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

"Yeah. And I'm just giving your squad the opportunity, kid."

"Oh, I'm the 'kid', again huh?"

"If you continue coddling your peers— I'm sorry, your subordinates. My bad."

"..."

"Kid?"

"..."

"If you don't wanna have a talk—"

I let out a chuckle, "I don't get the sudden hostility but if you want to pit my 'peers' against your 'subordinates' for the sake of healthy competition, you should've said so from the beginning—or better yet, you should've asked me to let them clear the stations yesterday for fuck's sake.

You're just fucking blindsiding me now with this sudden proposal and making use of this important operation to—"

Iskoh let out a dry chuckle, "You can always say no—"

I shook my head, "How could I say no now?! You dumb or what?"

At this point, my 'peers' were trying too hard to signal me nonverbally but I fucking got myself and I am very aware of what they were capable of. And yeah, it was true I was concerned about their safety and I should be putting their heads out of a moving train car from time to time, but dammit, I really fucking hate sudden changes to our supposed plans.

Iskoh scratched the side of his cheek, "If this is too much for you—"

"Mayor. You can fucking stop now," I said as I briefly glanced at my students, "I know their limits to an extent but I don't know the limits of yours. If we're talking about their safety—"

"We're not talking about safety, kid, we're talking about tempering them to be— Where are you going now?!"

"I'll show them temper…" I trailed as I made my way to his subordinates.

So right from the fucking get-go, I stood in front of them and looked them in the eye before I held my blade and made them think they were looking at their headless bodies from the floor. It only took a fraction of a second before 90% of them buckled and fell flat on their asses while the last 10% were frozen in shock.