2109, UNS Eternity. Location: Orbiting Luna Station.
On the ship's bridge, there was a woman sitting in a chair in the center of the room, along with about a dozen or so other people working the various ship monitors around the room.
"Ma'am. We will be arriving at the New York terminal within the hour." one of the bridge hands said.
"Good. Myself and Lena will be heading to the academy for recruiting day. I grant all non-essential personnel a day of leave in the meantime." the captain said.
The captain had long black hair and light blue eyes; her presence alone exhumed authority, but her body was also quite seductive with her large chest and near-perfect curves.
"Thanks, captain!" the bridge hands all cheered together, celebrating their leave.
"As always, none of you better cause trouble and be back here at 0800 or you'll be left behind." the captain said with a stern smile.
"Yes ma'am!"
The captain walked towards her personal quarters and walked over to her bed. She opened her nightstand drawer and looked at a picture. In the picture was herself along with another woman who was holding a baby and a man right next to them.
"I wonder how he's doing..."
*Location: New York City, Space Military Academy*
*BEEP BEEP REN WAKE UP, REN WAKE UP, BEEP BEEP*
Ren was having a peaceful night's sleep until the most evil sound any tired person has ever heard started.
Ren still groggy slaps his alarm clock, causing it to go quiet. He then closed his eyes and laid back down.
"Ren, you have to get up, man."
Another boy, around the same age as Ren, with short brown hair and brown eyes, tried to wake Ren up.
"5 more minutes..." Ren, with his eyes closed, is still half asleep.
"No, it's finals day, and I'll be damned if I let you sleep through it." the boy said.
"Tyler...why must you do this to me...?" Ren said.
"Because I'm your best friend. Now get your ass up and get dressed already." Tyler said, throwing Ren's dress shirt on him.
"Fine...Fine. I'm *yawn* I'm awake." Ren said.
"Good, now go shower." Tyler said.
"Yes MOM." Ren said as he walked inside the bathroom. "Do we have any clean towels?"
"Yeah, look in the closet." Tyler said.
After a quick shower, Ren left the bathroom wearing his school uniform, which was basically a white button-up shirt with a black tie with the school's logo on the front and black dress pants and dress shoes. "So how much longer until check-in?
"About forty minutes until the deadline. Lily and Scarlet are going to kill us both if we're late." Tyler said.
"Yeah, we need to make sure we've got everything before we head out." Ren said.
"True."
After the both of them quickly checked their belongings, they started to walk to the academy.
"Oh yeah, I sent a text to Lily and Scarlet. They'll be getting us some coffee." Tyler said.
"Good. I'm going to need it." Ren said.
"Did you stay awake all night?" Tyler asked.
"Not all night. I slept for...2 and a half hours...I think?" Ren said.
"We really need to get you some insomnia medicine..." Tyler said.
"Nah, I get more done this way." Ren said with a smile.
"Whatever you say."
As the two walked onto the campus, they passed by many other students like them with a variety of different colored ties. Ren and Tyler had black ties, meaning they were in the sentinel pilot program. Students with green ties were in the ground forces; red for the engineering corps; gray for sentinel mechanics; blue for ship pilots; and yellow typically represented the office jobs on earth for the military.
Ren and Tyler were third-year students, as now the age to join the military was reduced to allow 17-year-olds to deploy after three years at the academy in the US.
As the two arrived at the front gates, they saw two girls sitting on one of the benches holding a tray of coffee in their hands. One of the girls had long blue hair and blue eyes, and the other had long red hair and red eyes, both of which wore the black ties on their uniforms.
"Hey you two." Tyler said, waving at the girls.
"Oh, hey!" the girl with the blue hair said.
"Hey Lily. Thank you for the coffee. I needed it!"
Lily laughed. "No problem."
"Hey!" the red-headed girl yelled out. "I helped too!"
"And I appreciate it, Scarlet." Ren said with a smile.
"You better." Scarlet said as she lightly jabbed Ren's shoulder.
Ren then yawned before taking another sip of coffee.
"Rough night?" Scarlet asked.
"If by rough you mean he stayed up all night watching anime, then yeah." Tyler teased. "Seriously, you do remember you were invited to like three different parties last night? Hell Sabrina and all them were basically throwing themselves at you."
"Not interested." Ren said coldly.
"I...don't understand you. Luckiest bastard in the academy and won't put your popularity to use. Why couldn't I be that lucky?!" Tyler said, sighing.
"That sounds more like a you issue than anything." Ren said.
"Also doesn't help you are completely average in every way." Scarlet commented.
"Hurtful..." Tyler said, feigning sadness.
"It's okay, Tyler; you shine in other ways. After all, you are the best friend someone could have." Ren said, trying to cheer Tyler up.
"Yeah, yeah... I guess I am a pretty great friend." Tyler said proudly.
"Anyway, it's almost time for the test; let's get going." Scarlet said.
"I hope we all pass, guys; if we aren't on the same team, good luck!" Lily said, looking at everyone.
The four walked into the auditorium, where over one hundred of their classmates were standing. Ren, Tyler, Scarlet, and Lily joined their respective homeroom classes and waited for about fifteen minutes before an older man in his late forties walked to the podium wearing a military uniform.
"Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Today marks one of the biggest days of your lives, a day that will shape all of your futures. Many of you will go on to serve on the prestigious ships on the UNS. Now if you look to my right and my left, these sixteen men and women serve as our fleet admirals, each assigned to protect our solar system and humanity itself. You, the youth of this generation, will be joining these ships today; there are also a few others that couldn't come today as they are defending our various stations around the system; however, don't worry, they are watching you on the broadcasts. I wish all of you the best of luck."
The crowd of students applauded the speech. However, Ren noticed something out of the corner of his eye. A beautiful woman in her early to mid-thirties wearing a captain's uniform was sitting there looking around the crowd, but she stopped when she came to where Ren was sitting and had a surprised look on her face, but she quickly looked away when Ren noticed it.
"What was that all about?" Ren thought to himself.
However, his thoughts were quickly disrupted when two generals approached the podiums. One of them started speaking.
"Listen up recruits, earlier today myself and my colleague, Former Captain Mason Davies; here had a bit of a draft amongst you students, so under your seats is a piece of paper; if you have a red piece, you will follow Captain Davies; if you have a blue piece, you will follow me; my name is Former Captain Louis Marshall. We are both retired captains of our space fleet who know how to serve as instructors as well as in the reserves. Today in our mock simulation battle, we are going to play a classic game of capture the flag in the sentinel pilot simulators. We have split all of you evenly as close as we could, except for one of you, whom we flipped a coin for. Seat 175, will be joining me.
That joke at the end got a couple of laughs from the students, although not many people knew it wasn't a joke.
"So everyone, now we split for the mock examination; get your papers and get prepared." Captain Marshall said.
Ren looked under his seat, and there was a blue piece of paper. So he got up and walked to the blue side of the students and saw a familiar face among them; Scarlet was also in the blue group. Ren spotted Tyler and Lily over with the red group, meaning they would be facing each other on the simulated battlefield.
Tyler and Lily waved at the group, and Ren and Scarlet waved back.
One thing all four of them had a silent agreement before the test was that they promised each other there would be no holding back because succeeding in this test was the only way all four of them could stay together.
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