The encampment

For a long, heart-stopping minute, Shirou, Katy, and Mallory Weiss lay frozen in the treeline, the cheerful sounds of their friends' distant, hard-won celebration a distant memory of the terrifying militia before them. The meadow, which had promised food and a brief respite, had instead delivered them to the doorstep of their hunters.

The encampment below was a marvel of brutal efficiency. Tents, made of some dark, resilient material, were arranged in stark, military lines. Soldiers in practical, armored uniforms moved with a disciplined march that was terrifying to behold as they seemed to be constantly at attention. There was no wasted motion, no idle chatter that the three could discern. This was a force that knew its business.

"Those Demons," Mallory Weiss whispered, her usual free-spirited energy completely gone, replaced by a still, coiled terror. Her bird eyes, so good at spotting movement, were now taking in the horrifying details. "Look at their numbers, do you think they are actually machines always to be moving like that?"

Shirou followed her gaze. She was right. The soldiers on patrol would march in lock step or clean their weapons in constant motion with no waste of effort, like a well-oiled machine with no defects in sight. They held their weapons and complex instruments, and along their barrels or near their power packs, a faint, blueish light pulsed steadily — the same cold, unnatural light he had seen at the cliff that day. The connection was immediate and horrifying.

Katy pressed her body so low to the ground that she was practically part of the earth, and let out a low, almost inaudible growl. Her own keen eyes were fixed on the perimeter. "It's not only just a camp," she breathed, her voice tense. "It's a fortress. See those small posts by the trees? They must censor posts or maybe automated turrets. Something along those lines." She pointed with her nose towards small, floating drones that hummed silently as they patrolled the camp's edge in a constant, patterned path, with small rings of blue light rippling out from them.

The three of them exchanged looks of pure, unadulterated dread. The information they had just gathered was already far worse than they could have imagined. Their friends, celebrating over the hill, were in unimaginable danger; the only saving grace was that they hadn’t walked right in.

They remained frozen in their hiding spot amongst the trees, a cold sweat breaking out on Shirou’s brow despite the ambient heat of the jungle. The casual display of advanced technology below – the humming power lines, the silent drones, the glowing rifles and swords – was a world away from the primitive survival tactics that they had been enduring like early cavemen. These soldiers weren't just invaders of their peace; they posed a threat equal to conquerors and a natural disaster.

"A lovely little outpost, isn't it, Humanity?" The Great I, commented, my voice dripping with amusement as I observed the scene through the eyes of the terrified scouts. "They've brought their little metal toys with them. How quaint. Let's see how they handle the local customer service."

As if on cue, a commotion erupted from the direction of the forest to the northwest of the encampment – the general direction the students had come from. There were guttural roars, the snapping of branches, and then a small group of four soldiers came into view, moving backwards in a disciplined, controlled retreat. They were being hunted for once.

Bursting from the trees after them was a pack of creatures that looked like a nightmarish cross between a hyena and a porcupine. They were canine in shape, with powerful jaws filled with sharp teeth, but their backs were covered in a thick mantle of long, razor-sharp quills that they could visibly bristle and shake, creating a rattling, menacing sound. They were fast, agile, and clearly aggressive, lunging and snapping at the soldiers' heels.

"Oh!" I noted with some interest. "A delightful mid-tier predator has dropped in to play! Vicious, pack-oriented, with both offensive bite and defensive quills. A decent challenge for our little beast-folk, I'd imagine. For these soldiers, however? Let's consider this a baseline competency exam."

Shirou, Katy, and Mallory watched, expecting a desperate, chaotic fight similar to the ones they had endured. They were wrong.

The soldiers didn't panic. They didn't even shout. As these quill-hyenas lunged, the two soldiers in the rear turned, their movements perfectly synchronized. They didn't fire their rifles wildly. Instead, with a flick of a switch, a shimmering, translucent blue shield of energy, hexagonal in pattern, materialized in front of each of them. The lead quill-hyena slammed into one of the shields with a wet smack, its snapping jaws meeting the impassive energy field. The creature was thrown back, yelping in confusion, its fired quills rattling uselessly against the shield.

"Targets acquired," one of the soldiers stated, his voice a calm, flat monotone carried on a comms unit that crackled faintly, just barely audible to Shirou's sensitive ears. "Engaging."

The other two soldiers stepped through the defensive line created by their comrades' shields. They raised their energy rifles. There were no panicked shots, no wild spray of fire — just two distinct, sharp phwump sounds as two bolts of focused, blue energy lanced out.

One bolt struck a quill-hyena in the chest, passing clean through, leaving a cauterized, smoking hole. The creature dropped instantly, its legs folding beneath it without another sound. The other bolt caught the second creature in the head, and it simply... ceased to exist from the neck up, its body collapsing in a heap.

The remaining quill-hyenas, intelligent enough to recognize a fight they could not win, broke off their attack with terrified yelps and vanished back into the jungle. The entire engagement had lasted less than ten seconds.

The soldiers calmly lowered their weapons. The energy shields flickered and disappeared. One of them nudged a carcass with his boot, the same casual, dismissive gesture they had shown to Will.

"Patrol area clear," the soldier reported into his comms. "Two hostiles down. No casualties. Perimeter around base secured."

"And that, Humanity," I said, my voice soft with appreciative glee, "is the difference between panicked, desperate survival and cold, professional extermination. No mess, no fuss. Just overwhelming technological superiority and a complete lack of anything resembling mercy. My little beast-folk, with their sharp rocks and clumsy charges, wouldn't have stood a chance. They are not fighting other survivors. They are fighting an army that views killing these creatures as little more than routine pest control."

Shirou, Katy, and Mal lay pressed flat against the damp earth, the leaves of the ferns cold against their faces, their bodies trembling not just from fear, but from a profound, soul-crushing sense of utter hopelessness. The ten-second battle they had just witnessed – the effortless shields, the silent, devastating energy bolts, the casual disposal of creatures that would have been a life-or-death struggle for their entire group – had shattered any lingering, foolish notions of fighting back or even successfully evading for long.

Mallory Weiss, her roadrunner speed seemed utterly useless now, was frozen, her eyes wide, her usual energetic confidence completely gone, replaced by a still, hunted terror. Katy’s low, rumbling growl had ceased, replaced by the silent, ragged intake of breaths as she tried to control her fear. Shirou felt a cold dread seeping into his bones, a dread far deeper than anything the forest monsters had inspired. This was a force they couldn't outrun, couldn't outsmart, couldn't fight. They were insects, and this was the boot.

But amidst the terror, a question began to form in Shirou’s mind, a question born of a desperate need to understand. Why? Why was a technologically superior army like this camped out in the middle of nowhere? What could possibly be in this dangerous, monster-infested wilderness that was worth establishing such a formidable base for?

Driven by a desperate need for answers, they forced themselves to keep watching, their eyes scanning the camp for any clue. They saw the details now: the way the glowing blue energy conduits snaked from a large, humming generator tent to power the perimeter sensors; the way the soldiers’ armor seemed to have its own integrated power sources that glowed with the same faint light as their rifles; the bored, almost routine manner in which they patrolled their posts, as if this were just another day at a very strange, very dangerous office.

Then they saw it. The soldier who had delivered the killing blow to the second quill-hyena, the one whose comms Shirou had faintly overheard, returned to the larger command tent. An officer, distinguished by different markings on his armor, met him at the entrance. The soldier said something, then reached into a pouch at his belt and handed something small to the officer.

Shirou strained his eyes, his vision sharpened by days of necessity, pushing to its absolute limit. It was just a rock. A dull, grey, unremarkable-looking piece of stone. But as the officer turned it over in his gauntleted hand, it caught the light, and for a split second, Shirou saw a faint, internal glimmer. A cold, soft, almost imperceptible blue light pulsed within the rock, a light he had just seen from the guns. After that, the soldier opened up his own gun and pulled out a blue glowing crystal similar to sapphire or blue glass.

A crystal. The officer held the two together and had a wide grin on his face as he compared the two stones. The dull stone must be the raw, unrefined, naturally occurring crystal before it was processed; otherwise, why would this officer’s eyes blaze with greed and smile like some two-bit villain after having them in his hand? Humanity doesn’t seem to be different in any world they find themselves in, do they?

The realization hit all three of them like a physical blow, a sudden, horrifying clarity that made the blood run cold.

"No way," Mallory whispered, her voice barely a breath.

"A stone," Katy breathed, her eyes wide with horror. "A small stone is the energy source for their weapons."

The soldiers’ weapons could be used thanks to a simple stone. All three were in wonder at how this could be so; they theorized in their fantasies that maybe these soldiers weren’t just hunting them down for sport, but were in this dangerous jungle to look for more of these round stones.

The truth was now horribly, undeniably clear. They hadn't just been running from the soldiers. They had been running from the soldiers while squatting in the middle of their gold mine. The soldiers weren't just hunting them because they were "vermin"; they were hunting them because they were vermin that had infested a potentially valuable resource claim.

And now, armed with this terrible new knowledge, the three scouts had to find a way back to their celebrating, feasting, oblivious friends, to tell them that their greatest discovery was also their greatest liability, and that the hunt was about to become far more personal, and far more intense.

The journey back from the soldiers' encampment was a silent, frantic agony. Shirou, Katy, and Mallory moved with a desperate stealth that bordered on panic, every snapped twig underfoot sounding like a gunshot, every shadow seeming to hold a waiting soldier.

"Ah, the return journey!" The Great I, commented, savoring every terrified footstep. "No longer just a scouting mission, but the flight of heralds bearing tidings of doom! They carry not just information, but the very death of hope itself! Oh, the delicious burden they must feel! Every step brings them closer to the moment they must shatter the brief, beautiful illusion of safety their friends are currently indulging in. It's magnificent!"

As they crested the last hill and looked down into the meadow where they had left the main group, the scene that greeted them was one of almost jarring normalcy, a scene from a different, happier world. A large, well-managed fire was now crackling merrily, the massive carcass of the great herbivore being butchered by a team led by Rex Bouras and Ann King. The scent of roasting meat dripping with fat, each drip caused the fire below to sizzle and the flames to temporarily grow, with an undeniably rich scent of food, filling the air.

The three looked at each other with desperate faces as their stomachs growled and little bits of saliva dripped from the corners of their mouths. Shirou was wondering how the soldiers hadn’t seen the fire yet, and thought that it might be because it was still midday. They continued to look around for Ms. Linz, but all they could see were their fellow classmates chatting and celebrating like it was New Year's, and they were drunk on their own success.

The group, their bellies now full for the first time in over a week, was in a state of euphoria. The gnawing hunger and constant fear had been replaced by a surge of relief so profound it was almost manic. Some students were actually laughing, telling jokes. Others were meticulously cleaning the hooves or hide they had salvaged, their focus a welcome distraction. It was a fragile, precious moment of community and triumph. They had faced a monster and won a feast. They felt strong. They felt capable. Once again, they had hope, and they felt like they might survive this.

"Look at them, Humanity!" I chuckled, my voice dripping with dramatic irony. "Feasting! Laughing and basking in the glow of their pathetic little victory! They believe they've turned a corner in the page of their tale of woe! They think they've finally gained a foothold in this world! They have no idea what their scouts have seen, and they have no inkling of the death machines setting up camp just over the horizon. Oh, the blissful ignorance! It's the perfect setup for a truly spectacular emotional collapse!"

The three scouts' arrival was like a stone dropped into a placid pool. They stumbled out of the treeline, their faces pale, their eyes wide with a horror utterly alien to the camp's celebratory mood. The laughter and chatter slowly died down as everyone saw their expressions.

"Shirou? Katy? What is it?" Ms. Linz asked, her brief moment of relief evaporating into a cold dread. "What did you find?"

Shirou, his throat dry, his fox-ears flattened against his skull, looked at the expectant, hopeful, terrified faces turned towards him. He opened his mouth, but no words came out. It was Katy who finally spoke, breaking the silence, her voice a low, grim growl.

"They're here," she said, her voice flat. "The soldiers. An entire camp. Just over that hill and on the other side of the meadow."

A wave of confusion and fear rippled through the group. Mrs. Weiss, her antennae twitching, stepped forward. "A patrol?"

Shirou finally found his voice, shaking his head numbly. "No," he croaked. "Not a patrol. An entire encampment."

He then recounted what they had seen, his voice gaining a desperate urgency as the images replayed in his mind. He described the tents, the humming power conduits, the silent drones. He described the soldiers' armor, their casual discipline. He told them about the quill-hyenas, about the shimmering energy shields that had appeared from nowhere, and the silent, devastating bolts of blue light from their rifles that had annihilated the creatures in seconds.

And then, his voice dropping, he told them the worst part. He described the officer examining the small, grey rock. He described the faint, familiar, horrifying blue glow from within it.

"It seems that they are here to find a mineral that acts as the energy source for their weapons and technology," Shirou said, his voice cracking, the final, terrible piece of the puzzle falling into place for everyone. "We may be seen as a potential threat or viewed as an intel leak for them, which explains more for the reason they want to hunt us down for sport."

A profound, deathly silence fell over the meadow, broken only by the crackle of the cooking fire and the rustle of the wind through the bluish grass. The smell of roasting meat, which moments before had been a scent of triumph and salvation, was now background noise. Shirou’s final words—"hunt us down for sport."—hung in the air; no one could fully process them.

"Cue the gasps! The denial! The frantic, pathetic scrabbling of mortal minds trying to reject a truth too terrible to accept!" The Great I, announced with theatrical flair from my dimensional throne, savoring this exquisite moment of dawning horror. "This is always the best part, Humanity. The moment the prey realizes the hunter isn't just a bigger beast with sharper teeth, but something utterly, impossibly, beyond its comprehension. The moment the game changes, and they realize they were never even playing."

It was one of the chaperones, Mr. Wright, the Albatross-hybrid, who finally spoke, his voice a disbelieving croak. "Energy weapons? Shields? Son, are you… are you absolutely certain of what you saw? The light might play tricks out here…"

"It wasn't a trick!" Katy snapped, her cat-eyes blazing, her usual composure completely gone, replaced by a fierce, terrified certainty. "I saw it! The shields just… appeared. Like… like holograms right out of some sci-fi movie. The monster, they just… bounced off! And the rifles… they didn't fire bullets, they fired… light. It was silent, and the creature just… fell apart."

Mr. Wright, the Albatross-hybrid, asked in confusion. "But didn’t we only see a sword driven into the body of that rose-scented horror? If their weapons are so great, why is it that thing came barreling into our camp, destroying everything, instead of them killing it and having us be none the wiser?"

"I don’t know! We don’t know. What we do know can probably only be held within our hands. That is how little we know about them and this world." Shirou said, his voice trembling as he recalled all that they had gone through ever since coming to this world.

Mallory Weiss, the Roadrunner, who had been silent until now, her body still shaking with nervous energy from their stealthy retreat, spoke up, her voice fast and clipped. "And they were fast and disciplined to a point they seemed more like machines than humans."

The combined testimony of the three scouts, each account reinforcing the others from a different sensory perspective, was undeniable. The denial in the group began to crumble, replaced by a much colder, much deeper despair. Energy weapons. Personal shields. An organized, professional army. The context of their survival had just been violently, irrevocably rewritten.

"Oh, listen to them confirm it!" I cackled with pure delight. "The Cat saw the pretty lights! The Fox is shaking its head! The little Birdy saw the scary men moving in unison! It's all true! Sorry, kids," I addressed their terrified minds with mock sympathy, "the enemy leveled up while you played survivalist and roasted your mystery meats! Suddenly feeling a bit under-equipped with your claws and your bad attitudes, aren't you?"

The implications washed over them. They weren't just fighting soldiers with swords and bows, a threat they might have stood a chance against with their own monstrous strength and numbers. They were facing a technologically advanced military force. Their claws were useless against the energy shields. Their strength meant nothing against a weapon that could kill from a distance without a sound. What cold rocks even do against their armor, but piss them off? Every plan they had made, every bit of hope they had gathered, was based on a fundamental misunderstanding of their enemy.

Someone, a younger student, let out a low, choked sob. Another just sat down hard on the grass, their face staring off into the distance as their hands reached out, pulled out clumps of grass, shoved it into their mouth, and chewed mindlessly.

The fire crackled on, the smell of the roasting meat now seeming less like a feast and more like a final, mocking indulgence before the slaughter. The world hadn't just gotten more dangerous. It had become, in a single, horrifying instant, utterly impossible.

"The fire!" a student shrieked, their voice cracking with terror, pointing a trembling, clawed hand at the small, sizzling fire where the monster meat was cooking. "The smoke! They'll see the smoke!"

The cry acted as a catalyst, breaking the group's stunned paralysis and plunging them into mindless action. Several students scrambled forward, ignoring the protests of the cooking club.

They began kicking dirt and loose earth onto the embers with their new, strange feet–hooves, paws, and chitinous armored legs sending up clouds of dust. Another student, in a fit of pure panic, grabbed one of the few remaining semi-intact water-skins and dumped its precious contents onto the fire with a loud hiss, wasting their most vital resource to create a plume of steam and even more revealing smoke.

"Stop! You're making it worse!" Ms. Linz yelled, her voice sharp and desperate as she tried to push through the chaos. "You're making smoke!"

"Ah, panic!" The Great I, commented with a delighted sigh, observing the beautiful, self-sabotaging display. "The first response of any cornered, witless animal! They identify a potential threat – the fire – and in their frantic attempt to extinguish it, they create an even bigger, more obvious signal of their presence! Magnificent! Such tactical brilliance could only spring from the minds of terrified humans!"

It was into this chaos that Mrs. Winifred Weiss stepped forward, her voice like the sharp crack of a whip, cutting through the panicked shouts. "ENOUGH!" she commanded, her iridescent form radiating an aura of authority that momentarily silenced the pandemonium. She glared at the students kicking dirt. "You think putting out this pathetic fire will save you? They have drones and sensors for all we know. If they function like the ones we know of. It won't be long before they find us."

She turned her sharp gaze on Ms. Linz. "This is what your 'caution' gets us, Olivia. A panicked mob that wastes its own water. Hiding and running from a force like this is a fool's errand. It's a slow, miserable death sentence, and I, for one, will not partake."

"And what's your alternative, Winifred?" Mr. Rafner, the Raven teacher, said in a voice tense with desperation. “A direct assault? We know what their weapons can do. It is only a fool’s errand."

"A direct assault on their main camp would be suicide, of course. I am not a fool," Mrs. Weiss retorted coolly. She scanned the faces of the hybrid students now looking to her – Carlos Alfonsi, Arthur Finley, even Jack Sutton, his eyes glinting with aggressive interest. "But that army has to have patrols. Even Shitou told us of one of their three-man teams. Those small, isolated units can't be everywhere at once." She let the idea hang in the air. "We cannot match their technology. So, we do the only logical thing. We take it for ourselves in an ambush."

A murmur of shock and fear went through the students.

"She means… attack them? But didn’t the monsters attacking them get their heads blown off? Would we fare any differently?" Someone whispered amongst the crowded students.

"Look, we can’t stay as prey," Mrs. Wiess clarified, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial, persuasive hiss. "We become hunters. We find a small patrol, two or three men. We use our numbers, our new forms, the terrain we know better than they do. We ambush them. We eliminate them. And we take their rifles, their shields, their equipment. We learn how their power works. We arm ourselves. It is the only way we will ever be anything more than vermin cowering in a ditch, waiting for the exterminator."

Conrad Castillo, the Pit Viper, who had been observing from the shadows, allowed a slow, cold smile to touch his lips. “But do we really know the terrain any better than they do? Think with your head, woman. You claim to not be fool, fine then. But only have one life. Although I don’t agree with teacher Linz, I don’t plan on playing the martyr for your desperate grab for power amongst you adults. If anything, we should use traps to catch our targets if we go with your plan.” He said, hissing between words, staring off into the sky.

Ms. Linz looked horrified. "Look at you two. You're talking about murder! We should be better than them and…"

"I am talking about survival, Olivia!" Mrs. Weiss snapped back, her patience clearly gone. "You want to take the moral high ground? They killed Will Hopton without a word because he looked different! Do you think they will offer us a trial? They will shoot us down like rabid dogs! I, for one, refuse to be a dog. I am a Wasp. And wasps," she finished, her voice dangerously quiet, "sting."

Mrs. Weiss changed her stare-down with Ms. Linz to looking at Conrad and addressed him. “Sure, boy, using traps is one of the obvious tactics when setting an ambush. Why wouldn’t we do all we can to bring the numbers down to zero as much as possible when attacking the enemy, boy?”

“Fine, have it your way,” said Conrad, as his body slivered backwards to seem less antagonistic. “Guess no one can be a true voice of reason here anyway.”

The group was now utterly divided. The two opposing philosophies were laid bare: hide and hope to survive, or attack and risk everything for a chance to fight back. The air crackled with a tension far greater than any monster had yet produced.

The fire, doused with precious water and kicked dirt, hissed and sputtered its last, plunging their small clearing in the meadow into a deeper, more fearful gloom. The arguments, too, began to die down, not from resolution, but from sheer, soul-crushing exhaustion and the weight of the impossible choice before them.

Mrs. Weiss’s radical proposal to ambush soldiers hung in the air, as terrifying and as alluring as a siren’s song to a drowning man. To many, Ms. Linz’s desperate plea for caution and stealth felt like a slower but no less certain path to the same end.

"Ah, the awkward moment," The Great I commented, my voice a soft, almost reverent whisper in the narrative void. "The one after the shouting stops and the cold, hard, inescapable truth sinks into their marrow. No rescue cavalry is coming, my little beast-folk. No deus ex machina (except for me, of course, and I'm just here for the laughs and the inevitable tragedy). It's just you, the monsters, and the men with the rifles. This, Humanity, is when they truly realize that their old lives are not on pause. They are over. Welcome to the rest of your drastically shortened, and infinitely more interesting, new lives!"

It was Coach Ira Roberts who finally broke the tense silence. He wasn't addressing either Ms. Linz or Mrs. Weiss. He was speaking to everyone, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that commanded attention.

"Both plans are suicidal," he stated bluntly, his hippo-features grim. "Weiss, your plan to ambush a patrol… we don't know their numbers, their patrol routes, their communications. We attack one, and a dozen more might descend on us before we can even figure out how their rifles work. We'd be wiped out." He then turned his small, intelligent eyes to Ms. Linz. "And Linz… your plan to run and hide… we're blind out here. We have no idea where we're going other than the mountains to the East, and we have no idea where they are going. We could run straight into their main force, like we almost did today. That's just a different kind of suicide."

His brutal, simple logic was undeniable. Both proposed paths were based on ignorance.

"Then what do we do, Coach?" George Handcock asked, his voice rough with despair. "Just… sit here and wait for them?"

"No," Coach Roberts said. "We stop arguing about how to fight them or how to hide from them, and we start with the first, most important rule of any conflict: Know Your Enemy."

They were trapped, hunted by a technologically and tactically superior force, and utterly alone. Their only path forward, the only one that offered even a sliver of a chance, was long-term survival, evasion, and finding a sanctuary within this world, on its own terms. And that required intelligence.

"He's right," Ms. Linz finally said, her voice quiet but firm, a reluctant consensus forming between her and her rival. She looked at Mrs. Weiss. "We can't mount an attack without knowing their strength or patrol patterns."

"And we cannot effectively hide without knowing where they are looking," Mrs. Weiss conceded, her antennae twitching in grudging agreement.

A new, desperate plan began to form, synthesizing their two failed ideas. It was no longer about a grand exodus or a glorious battle. It was about one thing: information. "The recon team," Ms. Linz said, her gaze finding Shirou, Katy, and Mallory. "You three have seen them up close. You know what to look for."

"You want us to go back?" Mallory Weiss asked, her roadrunner-form tense, her voice tight with fear.

"Not to engage," Ms. Linz clarified quickly. "Not to fight. Not even to get close. Just… to watch. From a safe distance. Shadow them. We need to know their patrol routes, their numbers, their routines, and, most importantly, the direction of their main search. If we know where they're looking, we can go where they are not."

Mallory looked from Ms. Linz to Mrs. Weiss. “Mom, what is all this? Shouldn’t we at least make more groups in shifts of people? I mean, couldn’t Mr. or Mrs. Wright just fly high enough not to be noticeable and act as a spy satellite?”

“Mallory, I didn’t raise you to be a coward, plus you three were already proven to be an effective team to get there and back from their camp, and thus proven yourself to all of us here. I know you can do this and come back to us safely again. I have faith in you. Just keep an eye on that fox boy with you so he doesn’t mess it up.”

“But, mom, I,” Mallory said, before being cut off.

“Mal, please. We need you,” said Ms. Linz, her eyes widening as she started begging. “Please say you will go back out there so we know the path we should take to keep us all alive.”

“Fine! But, I want to eat first, like the rest of you.” Mallory said, squinting her eyes at the small pile of cooked meat starting to cool down.

"A new NEW plan!" I declared with a delighted chuckle. "Because the last two were so brilliantly conceived! This time, it involves… spying! Sending three terrified, barely competent teenagers to shadow a high-tech military unit! The potential for catastrophic failure is immense! Oh, the optimism is staggering! I give it twelve hours before they're captured or accidentally stumble into the command tent!"