The Moon Hiding at Dawn

Chapter 6: The First Night

Fifteenth of August came. Ramus, Randy, and I are on standby at our own tent by the school gate with our laptops in case the program goes haywire. A multi-camera live feed is projected on TV screens lined up in front. Medics are on standby in case of accidents. Rations, basically meals for everyone, are distributed at regular time intervals of the day in respective base camps. With around four thousand students, the war game is bound to be a mayhem. Chaotic in most ways for the initial hours and days. Chaos morphs to strategy on the later phase as lesser chess pieces are easier to control and monitor. The fewest of the few would make it more of a safe play defensive game. We are even expecting a case where no college gets another flag. That's how complicated this is.

Chris, Clyde, Rin, and Riz are at the field making sure that there are no violations like physical attacks of any range. Each of them carrying a handgun that can execute anyone from the respective colleges assigned. Chris is staying with the College of Business. Clyde with Engineering. Rin with Law. Riz with Social Sciences. We are not really expecting that to happen but it would be extremely rowdy if it would and we know, by all means, that a single person cannot actively engage and monitor every single student when the ratio is one to a thousand. That's where the rest of us here would come in and monitor everything that is happening and would pinpoint locations of interest.

I did suggest to just add a program that would allow us to remotely paralyze them with their armor but they did argue that it would be prone to the argument that we are picking favorites and are adjusting the tides of battle and that the said argument can be used against us even if we haven't had a single chance to use them.

Cynthia, Kallen, and Nina are sitting by the live feed together with Prof. Raymond, who seemed so proud and relaxed that he almost had a permanent smirk face. Other professors are settled behind them not uttering a word. Leftovers are also watching except that we have our phones on stand by in case we need to rapidly contact those in the field. I'm in charge of Riz, Ramus is in charge of Rin, Randy with the two remaining guys. Though this arrangement only exists as a contingency and I doubt that we would actually put it to use.

Take it as us doing another front to impress everyone with what a group of ten students can do with little assistance.

The event is slowly inching to its official start. Nothing is left to do but to wait for the timer to drop down to zero.

My eyes got fixed at Kallen, eagerly waiting for the event to start. I remember what happened last night, which ended in quite an awkward note. After the long stasis, we just said each other's goodbyes and went to our own homes. We haven't talked since then. No time to think about it though as the signal flare blazes up the sky and whistles the start of the game. (No we don't have pyrotechnics at play. It's just that the whole school is rigged to be a huge area that is enabled with augmented reality allowing us to project stuff as we wish, even to the point that we can manipulate what the sky is showing. Only through the lenses, of course.) 

From this point on would be a complicated account of events so I suggest having a handy notebook nearby like what the people from the school press did. Even then, they're struggling to take notes to the point that sports writers, people known to capture actions play-by-play, are already pulling their hair and bopping their heads from one screen to another.

I'd rather my account be taken. A gamer's eyes is not to be underestimated in focusing at many things at once. I guess perk those numbers up as well since I'm not just a normal gamer at this point.

College of Law advanced towards the building with haste with half a thousand students but left ten of them by their outpost. I guess they plan to set camps in advance and catch others by surprise. With a little bit of lag time from the Law students, the College of Business can be seen sending an all-out force of 1,500 which are divided into nine groups in a semi-circle which covers a single group in the middle, the one having the flag. Engineering students are the Spartans of the modern times, simply charging whenever without an obvious strategy in mind. The Social Sciences students are simply gathered as one and is treading the non-building areas as one. They would've been in danger if we really added the grenade idea... good thing we didn't.