“Today we will be doing aim training!” Jorgen proudly announced to his soldiers as we Generals stood to the side, “Remember, discipline is key! Do not, under any circumstances, fire before I tell you to.”

“Sir, yes, sir!” They saluted as they went into position.

It appears while we were away, Jorgen and Pierre were busy upgrading our base a little. Namely, places like the shooting range and the general training area where we played soccer a while ago, those received full-blown facelifts from the ground up. The shooting range in which we were at now used to just be a couple of cardboard cutouts which we would take aim at, but now it’s a lot more sophisticated, substituting the cardboard targets with metal ones. Apart from that, the range was lengthened, making you need to aim way better if you wanted to actually hit them.

“Shoot!” Jorgen yelled as we heard the bullets whizzing by one by one, “What the hell was that! You call yourselves soldiers, but only half of you actually hit the targets?! Again!”

At this, a poor rookie soldier misunderstood Jorgen’s intentions and took the “Again” to mean for him to shoot immediately. Obviously, the number one rule in Jorgen’s aim training today was to maintain discipline and to not fire prematurely. It seems the rookie noticed this the moment he realized he was the only one that fired in that moment, but before he could even say anything, Jorgen had already found himself looming over him.

“Rookie…” He exhaled audibly through his nose, “What, pray tell, did I say at the beginning of today’s training?”

“I-I’m sorry, sir! I d-didn’t…!”

“Failing to adhere to my orders is a liability in the battlefield, y’know that?!” Jorgen suddenly whipped out his own pistol and pointed it smack dab into the center of the rookie’s noggin, “Maybe I should just make an example out of you right here and now to the other idiots here and blow your brains out! Maybe that way you’d actually serve a purpose here, maggot!”

“Oi, brother! Stop it, what the hell are you doing! That’s unsafe!” Pierre went to approach him, but before he could, a loud gunshot echoed throughout the training grounds.

“…” Jorgen simply stood there, staring at the tiny dent in the concrete right next to the rookie, “Brother, you shouldn’t jump into a heated argument that involves firearms…”

“Oh! Is that right!?” Pierre shoved Jorgen all of a sudden, “Is my brother of all people teaching me about gun safety?! The very brother who almost just shot an innocent soldier of ours!?”

“I would never resort to shooting one of our own.” Jorgen rolled his Eyes, “Come on, rookie, get up.”

As we all looked down at the terrified soul sitting on the ground, the thing that had caught our Eyes first was two things: the first was his vacant expression, and the second was the liquid stain in between his legs.

“Ew, gross! Did he piss himself?” Aaron jeered, “Now look what you did, Jorgen. I hope you’re damned proud of yourself after embarrassing the poor guy like this!”

“Hrmm…” Jorgen grumbled, “Not my fault he’s such a weakling.”

Without even a word more, the rookie had suddenly flopped down on the floor as if he had just died, except his Eyes were still wide open. Hold on, that way of passing out isn’t natural! Running up to take a look at his sorry state up close, I had noticed it immediately.

“Max, get the first aid, he’s having a heart attack!”

Gasping upon hearing what had happened to this poor soul, everyone entered a state of unreasonable panic. Jorgen tried commanding everyone to stop with all the unnecessary shouting, but his order fell on deaf ears.

“No way, asshole!” The other soldiers berated him, “You just killed a soldier with your stupid threats! You’re no General, you’re just a fraud!”

One by one beginning to chant “Fraud!” at him, it seems the only people who were actually still willing to help me save the rookie’s life were Max and the other Generals. I had Meil help me for this next procedure, and remaining calm in such a critical moment, we had somehow managed to stabilize his health. That was far too close.

“See?” Jorgen approached us as we slowly got back up, “He’s fine, nothing to shit your pants over.”

“What did you just say?” I got up face him, “It’s one thing to try and act all cool in front of others, but this is a completely different issue, you piece of shit! Your pride almost singlehandedly sent this poor fuck to an early grave, and yet you still refuse to even pretend to feel responsible!?”

“Jorgen, take the day off today.” Meil had advised him, “We will handle the rest of today’s training without you, it is better for both you and the other soldiers.”

“Hell n-!” Jorgen tried butting heads with Meil, only to get yelled at more.

“We will discuss this later!” Meil shouted, “You are going to have a lot of apologizing to do tomorrow, but right now no one even wants to see your face! Myself included!”

“Mnn…” Jorgen finally got the message and stormed off, muttering, “Piss off, the lot of you! Don’t understand what I’m doing for you all here... Absolutely no sense of respect!”

Seeing his brother get dogged on by everyone kind of got to Pierre it seems, as he shortly went after him to talk things over. That being the case, the only Generals that remained now were Maxwell, Aaron, Meil and I, so I guess we’ll just have to find a way to continue from where we had stopped somehow. Though I’m not saying it’ll be easy, by any stretch of the imagination.

***

“Fire!” Maxwell took charge of the callouts after Jorgen was kicked out of today’s training, “Good job, guys, slowly but surely more and more of you are starting to hit your targets! Now, take a break to inspect your gun and properly reload before we can shoot the next magazine. Remember, safety is number one priority!”

“Looks like the rookies are enjoying this friendlier approach to the training.” I offhandedly praised Max’s leadership skills to Meil, “Then again, Max was always the friendlier goofball General, so it’s no surprise that the rookies are favoring him over the strict Jorgen so much.”

“I do not quite understand it, Edward.” Meil shook his head, “General Jorgen should be strict, just as he is, but are there not boundaries that one should not cross in order to maintain a healthy relationship with his followers?”

Well, he’s completely right. Actually, it seems that Meil, the one guy that’s always painfully innocent and naïve, had somehow understood this one simple thing way before Jorgen could ever hope to do so. Still, Prylos knows what kind of horrible things have been troubling him to actually get the idea to point a gun at a fellow soldier. I’m sure whatever it is, though, Pierre will surely help him get back on the right track. They’re brothers after all, there’s just no other person out there in the world who could help him understand what he did was fucked up.

“Oh hey, now that I think about it, Meil, we didn’t really get all that much time to chat ever since I came back.” I recalled.

“Right, you two have visited Lichtenstelle to bury Lune.” He remarked, lowering his tone as if he was talking about something taboo, “How did they take it?”

“Better than I had expected, honestly.” I suddenly thought of Nelly, “Oh, Nelly told me to say hi to you.”

“Naww, how cute.” He smiled, “She is a real angel. I wonder how much she has grown in the years since I have last seen her.”

How much she’s grown? Damn, now that I know how Nelly feels towards him, I can’t help but feel just a tad bit suspicious about how Meil sees her as well. I know it’s rude to think of your friends like that, especially since Cecily assured me he wasn’t like that, but I can’t help but be wary of him all of a sudden.

“She’s about… this tall, I guess.” I more or less gestured her rough height in comparison to me, putting my outstretched arm to about hip height.

“Splendid!” He smiled even more, “I am sure she will grow into a fine woman one day…”

“A-A fine what now?!” I jolted.

This guy might actually be Eyeing her here! No, wait, calm down Ed. It’s rude to assume something like this about someone, especially if we’re talking about Meil. Come on, the phrasing might’ve been a bit off, but honestly, so is he. Chances are he’s just saying something innocent, but his phrasing made it weird. Yeah, that’s gotta be it.

“Oh right, Cecily mentioned you two are going to be attending University together.” I tried switching topics, “You excited?”

“Oh, very much so, yes.” Meil nodded like a dog, “I cannot wait for that promised day to come where she finally shows up at my dormitory! Ah, just thinking about all the exciting things I will teach her makes me all giddy…”

“Exciting things?!”

“Hm?” He suddenly tilted his head, “Yeah, like, all the adult parts of life. God knows those two have not properly taught her, given how shy Cecily is and all.”

“H-Hold on now!” I grabbed him by the collar, “That can’t be right! A-And besides, what makes you think you’re the one that needs to teach her?! She’s way too young to be learning those things!”

“Edward, are you crazy?” He chuckled, “The younger they are, the better.”

Oh no… T-There’s no mistaking it now… Meil is a genuine lolicon! What the hell! This is bad! Super, super bad! I cannot allow Nelly to get tricked by him! As her uncle, I need to protect her at all costs from him! But how, how do I go about doing this? I-I know! I just need to send Cecily a letter telling her about all the horrible things he’s said!

“Edward, please do not misunderstand my intentions.” Meil had finally given me a sliver of hope that I was the one misunderstanding all this.

“Meil, my guy, I really wanna trust you here, but you’re making it extremely difficult.” I sighed, “I’m gonna give you one more chance to explain things properly, so go on – I’m all ears.”

“Okay?” He seemed confused, “Well, I do believe it goes without saying, but I will take responsibility for her. I don’t think you should worry in that regard, as I’ll show her all the papers, and we can officially begin planning our life together even as early as the moment she enrolls.”

What the hell, man!? You’re so proudly proclaiming you’ll take responsibility without even doing anything yet? That’s a whole other level of crazy, you idiot! And what the hell do you mean “I shouldn’t worry”, huh?! How can I not worry when he talks about settling marriage papers and planning their life together as if it’s the most normal thing in the world?! That’s it, I’m convinced! I’m off to send Cecily that letter as soon as possible.

“Gotta go!” I suddenly bolted away, leaving everyone utterly confused.

I couldn’t quite hear what the others were saying behind me, but it didn’t matter right now. All that matters is Nelly’s safety!

“What was that all about?” Aaron went to ask Meil.

“I do not understand either.” He shrugged, “I was only talking about teaching Lune’s daughter how to properly pay her taxes, and then Edward suddenly got all panicked and left the premises.”

“Weirdo.” Aaron commented.