Across the Universe: A BFDI Oneshot Collection

Where is Everyone?

"Hey," Ly-Kning suddenly said, placing his sandwich back down on his lunch tray.

Ru-Bee turned to face him with her mouth full of bread roll, and Fan-Nee twirled her fork around with a bored expression. "Yeah?" Nee asked, prodding a lump of meat with her fork before accidentally piercing it.

"You ever wonder why we're here?"

"It's one of life's great mysteries, isn't it?" Nee sighed and placed her fork down on the tray, staring up at the ceiling.

"No, not that. I mean, why are we here?" Kning clarified.

Bee swallowed her bread roll and chimed in, "Because we signed up to fight bad guys!"

"Okay, but why would the BFDI let an entire training starship only be used by three trainees—" he gestured around him to the near-empty mess hall, as their table was the only occupied one— "and a commander? We don't exactly have that big of a fleet. The standard for a training starship is eight trainees anyway."

"And we did have eight," Nee reminded him sourly. "Except Byl got transferred to the Medic, Err to the Demo, Boll to the Heavy, and Match and Cyl to the Spy. Thanks for reminding us that we're lagging behind, Kning. Even the girl whose name is literally a synonym for 'mistake' completed training before us. And I hate being embarrassed like that."

"No, no, think about it." Kning focused his attention on her and started animatedly gesturing with his hands. "Eight is the standard, right? You know how crazy the BFDI is with recruitment drives and all that. With so many drives going on, we're bound to have an abundant supply of trainees. And if our fleet is really so battle-deprived of starships, then we can't have that many training ships available. So...why haven't any more trainees come here to replace the ones who got transferred out?"

Bee made a confused noise and tilted her head, but the realization slowly dawned on Nee as her face twisted from annoyance to deep contemplation. "Huh...you're right," she noted. "There's no reason for the BFDI to stop training trainees unless we don't have enough recruits. Either that or something huge happened, like the war ending, that we don't know about."

"Wait," Bee suddenly said. "What if...the war was never even real? What if Neteo never even existed, and what if we're just all subjects of a giant experiment testing the effects of space on group isolation?!"

Kning and Nee stared at her, then back at each other. "...And this is why we haven't completed training yet," Nee sighed.

Hiss.

"Oh, boy..." Nee muttered. She quickly stood up and, despite the only other two cadets on the ship being right next to her, followed protocol and yelled, "ATTENTION!"

Soon after the others stood up, Commander Syx nodded. "As you were."

The three cadets all glanced at each other tentatively. Syx looked at each of them, puzzled. "As you were, cadets," he repeated. When they still didn't sit down, he asked, "Is there a problem?"

Nee looked back at Kning one more time before nodding and raising her hand. "Permission to ask a question, sir?"

"Granted."

"Why are there only three cadets on this training ship?"

Syx raised an eyebrow and walked closer to her, sitting on the table next to them. "I'm not sure what you mean by that, Fan-Nee."

"Why haven't we gotten replacements yet?" Kning clarified, turning to face Syx. "The other five already got transferred a while ago. Shouldn't we be receiving new trainees?"

"Did anyone tell you that we were getting new trainees?" Syx asked.

"No, we just...kinda expected to get some. After all, the standard number of cadets on a training ship is eight."

Suddenly, without any provocation, Bee stepped forward, pointed an accusatory finger at Syx. "I know why we're not getting any trainees!" she declared. "The BFDI secretly has super immense firepower in its arsenal and could end the war with Neteo any time it wanted, but it knows that if the war ends, the member planets will just go back to killing each other for no reason! So they're faking the illusion that we're still in dire straits to keep the member planets invested in this 'war' against a common enemy, and part of that illusion is not being able to replace promoted trainees efficiently! And you know what, 'Commander Syx'? You're probably just a regular soldier and not even an officer! Is that it?!"

Kning and Nee stared at Bee, dumbfounded with their jaws dropped. She didn't usually, if ever, burst out like this with logic seemingly as sound as she had just now. But before they could really think through her explanation, Syx blinked a few times and rapidly shook his head.

"What? No. We just train the vast majority of our cadets on the ground."

Bee raised her finger to object, but immediately stopped as soon as she realized how much sense that made. Kning and Nee looked at each other awkwardly.

"...Oh."

That was all the three cadets could say.

"Why do you think the officers visit the planets so often?" Syx continued. "To supervise the boot camps there. The training ships serve two main purposes: to train cadets from destroyed planets and to train cadets who show exceptional combat aptitude. Three of the five recently graduated cadets were from destroyed planets, Buh-Byl was transferred to the Medic—which isn't even a combat ship—and Flow-Err showed exceptional physical strength, as you all know. If anything, you three should feel honored to be training on a starship at all. Fanasaze, Lynizero, and Rubble haven't exactly been running low on recruits eager to see space, you know."

When the three cadets still remained silent, Syx clapped his hands once and said, "Well, this was a very enlightening conversation, but time waits for no soldier, and neither do the Neteos. Lunch ends in 10 minutes. Be at the training room in half an hour. As you were." With that, he walked out of the mess hall.

A few awkward moments passed by before Kning said, "Hey, Bee, what was all that stuff about the war being fake?"

"Uh...hmm?" Bee briskly sat down and reached for another bread roll. "Nothing."

"...You wanna talk about it?"

"No."

"You sure?"

"Yeah."