Penguins of Anarchy

Six

Days passed.  Dreemo, Sam, and Felly learned more and more about combat tactics.  Although they knew they could use what they'd learned to their advantage once they were out on the battlefield, they were tiring of the sergeants barking questions at them about how to react in different combat situations, and were ready to start executing the maneuvers in real life.

Now, Dreemo clenched a knife in his sweaty flipper, its carefully shaped and incredibly sharp edges causing him to fear that, if he wasn't careful, the weapon would be more of a danger to himself than to anyone else around him.

He stood in a very dark room, spotlights blazing bright light only in the center of the room--where he was standing--to provide very limited visibility.

He heard the footsteps.  He knew what was coming.  But he had no idea where the attack would come from.  Breathing hard, his blade pointing backward, his stubby knees shaking, he knew he wouldn't dare move, afraid that he might bump into the attacker.  All he could do was turn in a slow circle...

And wait.

The attack was sudden.  A penguin leapt at him with a blade in his own flipper.

Whirling to face the attacker, Dreemo impulsively swung his knife in terror.  It was by pure chance that his blade clanged against the attacker's, sending the attacker diving past Dreemo.

Letting out a nervous breath, glad that he could now see the assailant, he got into a crouching stance, blade held across from his chest, ready for the next attack.

The attacker sprinted toward Dreemo, jumped forward to close the remaining distance, and swung his knife, blade-first, at Dreemo's head.

Dreemo ducked to avoid being impaled in the skull, then lunged at the assailant, knocking him to the ground.  He stabbed the attacker in the flipper, causing the attacker to release his knife, though the penguin made no cry of pain.  Dreemo then kicked the attacker's knife away and stood over him hesitantly.

A voice over a hidden loudspeaker shouted angrily, "Well?  Are you going to kill him, soldier, or just stand there and wait for a counterattack?"

"I already beat him," Dreemo replied to the bodiless voice.  "I have no reason to kill him now."

After a moment of silence, the voice said, "So be it."

The penguin attacker leapt back to his feet and swung hard with his fist at Dreemo's face, sending him sprawling across the metallic floor.

As Dreemo groaned in pain, his vision clouded and unfocused, the attacker grabbed his lost knife in his good flipper and plunged it into Dreemo's chest.

An intense and sharp pain, sharp as the blade that delivered it, pierced Dreemo.  He cried out in agony, his head throbbing; his mind racing, imagining the blood that must be gushing out of his wound...

And then the simulation was terminated, and Dreemo saw the white, square training room he was in through his now-transparent simulator goggles.  Still lying on the ground, his movements having been copied by the simulator to create the impression that he was in a real combat situation, Dreemo looked at his chest and saw no blood or rip in his sweat-soaked gray shirt, due to the simulation having only generated the sensation of being stabbed in the chest.

Gasping out of exhaustion and shock, Dreemo let his head thump back to the cold floor; the actual, well-lit room he had been training in being much smaller than it had seemed when it was mostly dark in the simulation.

Sgt. Shraknal, the one whose voice had been heard over the loudspeaker, opened the titanium door that closed off the simulator room from the observers that had watched Dreemo through the large plastic window that stretched across the same wall.  The sergeant stomped over to Dreemo and, his large figure standing over the young recruit, demanded, "Why didn't you kill your opponent?"