The air feels as if it is filled with electricity as we stare each other down. I keep my eyes locked on the the Majors looking for any sign of attack. I know it's coming soon, and just from the few weeks of working together and PT she far outclasses me, not to mention her taekwondo kicks are brutal, mixed with extreme agility she is a force to be reckoned with.

I on the other hand am a 17-year-old boy, who has gotten into a total of six fights in his entire life, is built like a twig, has feet of concrete and lead, and my only combat sports victories have been in little league and high school wrestling where I did well but wasn't a completely dominating force either. The only thing I have going for me is I have a seemingly unnatural endurance which my father and I both shared. I could always fight through pain and tiredness, how much is mental and how much is physical is beyond me, but all I know is those big kicks take a lot of energy to spin up, so my only chance is to use her anger at having her privacy invaded in an honestly horrible way, and do what I can to force her to try and one hit KO me with big heavy moves, and survive them. Once she is tired I can start working, I just have to survive.

Before the fight starts though I have one more thing to say,

"Major... I don't want this fight. I'm sorry I did not report or stop him, but I can say with absolute certainty I did not go through your shit."

I keep my eyes locked with hers to show my lack of guilt and show that I am being honest. Her face remains stony and she simply replies,

"Your innocence is not the point of this fight, and I think I need to do this to all of you."

SHIT.

She taps her right toe once and her right leg flies towards my head at blinding speed. I am unable to dodge but I move my shoulder upward and block the quick strike. As soon as she brings it back she uses it as a pivot for her left leg to come up in a brutal roundhouse kick. This one I am unable to do anything about and take the hard-hit in the head causing me to stumble sideways, but due to the contact with my head her followthrough is slow and I catch her ankle. It's small enough for my hand to wrap around fully and I lift it into the air above my head. She is flexible enough to keep her right leg planted. I use one of my legs to sweep her planted one and she starts falling forward.

I thank my lucky stars thinking I can end this sooner by using my superior grappling skills and size to hopefully shred her stamina, instead, she tucks her head and me forgetting women are usually about twice as flexible as men, watch as she rotates the hip of the leg I'm holding a full 360 degrees to come up and slam her left leg into my chin, using my grip on her ankle to hold her in the air. The sudden extreme weight increase though causes me to fall forward on top of her, because I refuse to let go, and I am not strong enough to hold her full weight above my head in an outstretched arm. I do see stars from the boot to the chin but shake it off quickly.

On the ground, she quickly goes for an armbar, but I put my knee between our bodies not allowing her legs to get onto my chest. After a little wrestling like this, I manage to get free and put her ankle into the crook of my arm. I drop to my rear and start pulling back with my fist on her calf. It's about to be a textbook ankle-lock but then her other foot gets planted firmly in my crotch which she then stomps. Pain shoots through my genitals up into my gut where I feel as if I am about to puke, the low blow causes me to loosen my grip and she begins to slide out. Instead of just rolling around in pain like I want to I catch her as she is about to stand up and rise to one knee, I grab the back of her head and bring my other knee up into her face. I really don't want to hit a woman, but clearly, I am the one at the disadvantage, so that old tradition of men not hitting women can be ignored at the moment.

She falls backward and tries to get up again but I come at her with a heavy punch to the head and she's on the ground once more. Her specialty is her flexibility and speedy strikes, on the ground strikers are almost completely useless. She throws a punch from the ground but it's weak due to having no leverage. I pun her shoulders with my knees and slap the piss out of her. I shout,

"Fucking enough already! I don't know what you have to prove but you've done it. Do you think it's a lack of disrespect? Do you think we in your squad think lesser of you because you are a woman? That's the complete opposite of the damn truth! Yeah, I should have stopped his perverted ass! That's on me, but whatever this is you are going for it's stupid and won't solve jack shit. We all fucking idolize you as the perfect soldier. We look up to you and see a mountain we can never overcome and here we are, you're so pissed off, me, the weakest of us all is able to pin you down and you can't do shit about it! So, what are you going to do moving forward here? Court marshal my ass, go-ahead see if I fucking care, I'd rather be in a jail cell than follow someone into battle whose self-worth is so fragile that she has to beat the hell out of everyone anytime someone slights her. I get it. That sucks, I don't understand how a lady feels when someone pervs on them, but if I may be rude enough to say, we can solve this shit like adults. "

I stop yelling and find myself breathing harder than I should be considering how surprisingly short the fight was. Her face slowly relaxes from the angry one she's been having, back to the cold and almost emotionless one I am used to. I let out a breath of relief and roll off of her, my head spinning from the few hits to it I did take. She sits up and brushes herself off a little before replying,

"You're right Mike, I was acting rather childish. I just never had that level of invasion of privacy before. I freaked out and messed up. I am sorry. From your overall reaction to the accusation and fairly fierce fighting to defend yourself, I will say you are telling the truth. You are right, a commanding officer shouldn't let emotion get in their way, especially to this extent where I go out and physically assault my squad unless it's the absolute last resort. While you will face some suffering for your lack of action, you are free from the main issue at hand."

She stands up and offers her hand to me. I take it and stand up. I had lost nearly all respect for her, as I was being falsely accused and I also wasn't being heard, but now, I think I've regained most of it back, it's difficult to admit you were in the wrong about something, especially to someone you have authority over, plus knowing she hasn't been perved on before in this manner, her reaction is more or less completely understandable. She then whispers into my ear as we walk out of the tent,

"Thank you for slapping sense back into me, if you work hard and stay on the straight and narrow after your punishment, maybe I might recommend you for an officers position within our squad."

I just simply laugh to myself a little, that statement seems so absurd. Me? A 17-year-old without any college under his belt becoming an officer? That's really stupid to even imagine.

We walk out of the tent together, both staring at Blake.

Well, things didn't go as I expected. Blake didn't get his ass kicked like I thought he needed, instead he was discharged for sexual harassment and sent back to jail to continue his sentence. I on the other hand got the non-legal punishment, as deserved.

After eight continuous hours of doing laps around the entire camp, I feel as if my legs are about to fall off of my body and my lungs and heart are going to leap out of my chest. Texas heat does not fuck around, considering I started running at noon I got to experience all stages of dehydration and grief at the same time. I was given a camel pack to drink from so I didn't die and it got refilled while on the run twice, but the agony is real, and I have never in my life been a good runner, my form is shit, and I am slow, I just have good endurance and mental toughness to power through, but after 30 minutes all mental toughness and endurance seems to disappear no matter how well I pace myself. I think even walking in this heat for that long would result in one feeling like they are about to die of exhaustion.

By eight in the evening, an old humvee pulls up next to me. Freddie is driving and Major Prisca is hanging out the doorless passenger side. They pull up alongside my low and staggering form. I don't even have the energy to look over at them. I look and feel drained and my clothes look as if I have been swimming. They drive alongside me for a few moments before the Major says,

"Alright, you look to have learned your lesson. You can go hit the showers, we saved you some dinner."

I just nod and stop my movement, I then begin walking slowly toward the barrack to get a change of clothes before heading to the shower building. I manage to get my shower done as my legs shake under me as I both walk and stand under the lukewarm shower which is at maximum temperature. When that ends I return to the barrack and find a spaghetti MRE on my bed with three bottles of water. I sigh and tuck into my humble meal thankful I even get food before bed. Jack and Stevie give me shit about getting in trouble, I'd normally respond but I am so dog tired I can't even think of a funny response. I simply slurp down my tasteless meal and lie back in bed wanting to just go to sleep. I'm not saying my punishment was unfair, just saying it sucked.

Then Major Prisca walks in carrying some papers, with Freddie carrying a very heavy-looking crate behind her. Freddie sets down the crate and wipes his brow as the Major begins speaking to us all,

"Alright, we deploy tomorrow, due to our smaller numbers we will work as either a patrol or support element. We most likely won't see much combat until we get our missing numbers filled, either by survivors of other squads lost, or fresh recruits. Since our division is the first true AMS division our first missions will be exploratory and more training-oriented than anything. To hammer out the kinks in doctrine, as prior to this we did not have AMS in our military, so all doctrines are purely theoretical based on those first prototypes sent out at the onset of this war.

Due to our special exceptions to frontline combat at the moment, we get to sleep in a little. We are to be in our AMS by 0800 hours. From there we will be airlifted and deployed somewhere near Merida on the horn in the gulf. Imperial forces landed in Veracruz initially and made a beeline for Mexico City, so the horn has faced limited attacks, but there have been some air assaults and some other elements have been spotted there. The Mexican military as you know is stretched thin, and the US government is only sending somewhat small numbers of support troops like us. I guess we are holding the main forces back until they reach the border, but I can't say.

Anyway, this crate here has combat uniforms, they are armored, not that you would survive a penetrating shot, but to protect from internal spall and fragmentation. I recommend getting lots of sleep tonight, as we will be on the job for a while and I don't know how often we can get a full night's sleep. Alright, get your stuff from the crate, there is one set for everyone and they should be in your sizes, the quartermaster couldn't be bothered to sort them for us, so good luck. Dismissed."

With that, we all get up and begin sorting the clothes out by best fit. Major Prisca is the first one done with this as she is the only one with women's sizes. Eventually, we all get our gear. It's a simple skin-tight fatigue style shirt with purpose cut holes in the back, and over it, we wear a bullet-proof vest with magazine holders and a pistol holster. The vest has backplates but they have holes in them for the AMS connection. Aside from that, there is a standard ballistic helmet with protective goggles and tough pants with boots. With all my stuff laid out next to my bed, I head off to sleep which comes easily due to my tired state.

The next day we suit up, get loaded into our AMS' and ship off to Mexico, I guess it's time to go fight a war, I hope everything goes well...

[Maybe, let's skip a little further ahead, no need to relive two weeks of patrol and our first combat experience, here, I think this will conclude the dream nicely...]

My AMS limps back to the hangar, my right leg screaming in pain as it got hit with an RPG, who knew there were Imperial sympathizers in Mexico? When I get back I disconnect from my AMS and bend forward in extreme pain, both from the disconnection and the large piece of metal embedded in my arm. The chest of my AMS opens and I crawl out onto the walkway groaning in pain and holding the wound hoping to stop blood loss. We got ambushed hard, they came out of the jungle with missiles, I remember watching the Mexican marines we were supporting get cut down by the machinegun fire of the militants.

Despite taking the single hit to the leg my AMS is without damage, my injury came from the compound we had to clear after the ambush, we chased our attackers back to an old school, where we had to dismount and go in on foot with the remaining Mexican forces. I fought hard and did my duties, but the things we saw in there are burned into the back of my eyes. The militant forces here are cartel members hired by the Solar Empire as local support. What they had done to some captured soldiers, both American and Mexican are beyond words. Severed limbs, heads, and genitals. A few were crucified, and some bled like hogs in a slaughterhouse. I remember puking there and feeling shaken for the rest of the sweep, maybe that's how I got stabbed.

The metal in my arm is a broken blade from a knife, a militant had jumped out from around a corner as I was working as the point man in one of the strike teams. He got me in the arm and I fought him off but his knife broke and I shot him dead. The whole rest of the mission, the only reason I wasn't shutting down out of pants-wetting terror and disgust was how hurt my arm was.

A group of medics come and collect me and take me to the medical center at the base we are at. They remove the blade, sew me up and cauterize the wound, apparently, it was pretty clean and only hit flesh. I have a couple of weeks of recovery but overall was fine. They give me some anti-biotics and send me back to the barrack. When I stagger in only Major Prisca is there. I simply just return to my bed and fall onto it. I joined to avenge my father, that's what I want to do, but now I don't know. The fear I feel, the sadness and disgust at the horrors of what I have already experienced feels like too much. I nearly died! I almost had a knife driven through my neck!

I curl up in bed and I feel tears welling up in my eyes, no amount of hard training can prepare you for this. At the time of killing the men, either with my 25mm autocannon, or with my rifle, I hardly felt a thing, but now I see all their faces as I close my eyes, I just want it to stop. I feel my body seize with a sob, but I stay quiet as not to disturb the Major, I just try to let it all out quietly, I want to go home... but I can't I've already gone through this much, I won't be allowed to leave until either I die, be made unable to serve, or this war ends. The feeling of being trapped and knowledge of what I experienced and these feelings will happen again feels so overbearing and heavy. I feel so lost...

My mind cycles through this destructive cycle of feeling sorry for myself, and outright fear in my head as I shake in bed with spasms every now and then as I try to stifle a sob. Then I feel something warm behind me as two gentle arms wrap their way around me as a body presses against mine. They are careful not to hit my injured arm. My sobbing pauses at this and my body stiffens as I am startled by this sudden contact. Then the voice of Major Prisca speaks softly to me,

"It's okay just relax... I know what you're feeling, it's horrible, isn't it? I'm sorry you ended up in the worst parts of that horrible place, you saw things that no person should see, especially a minor."

I say quietly back trying to sound neutral,

"I-I can't be a minor, I'm serving remember."

She replies,

"Don't try and fool me Mike, it took me all of five minutes to figure out you lied about your age. I don't blame you... but most of all it's okay to be upset. This is horrible, for anyone. The others are surprised you haven't just outright quit after seeing what you did, I'm proud of you...

Feel free to let it all out, it makes you feel better, trust me... I won't tell anyone."

I sit there for a moment as my throat tightens and the tears return to my eyes. I lie there embraced by her for a while letting all the horrible emotions and thoughts out through my tears, but eventually my eyes dry and my heart feels much better. I thank her for helping me and as she lets go and stands up she says,

"Mike, anytime you feel as if the world is too much, come to me, I'll do whatever I can to help you get through it, I'm also sure the other guys will do the same but in a more... manly way. All I ask is you to keep serving, you did a great job, and most of all, keep that heart, that sadness and fear show you are human, when you lose that it's difficult to call you human anymore, so please, stay human."

She smiles warmly at me and I feel my heart melt, this woman is easily my idol, and I'd follow her through the gates of hell and back...

[Okay, that's a good place to end it, and I don't need you to get into your feelings as I promised a good dream. It was nice for me to relive that too, but trust me and I'm sorry for it, you can't have more than this, because the more you remember her... the more likely you are to break that promise to her again... and I can't go through that again.

I'll give you a few more hours of sleep. Goodnight]