Evening finds me standing in the center of a large sporting goods store, which was rather hard to locate. With more and more of Japan becoming inhospitable and dangerous to occupy, leaving the city to do something like camping just isn’t practical anymore. People still do it, of course — people have to live their lives, dangerous or not — but it led to stores like this one becoming less common.

  Still, the merchandise a store like this has to offer is just too useful to pass up — particularly with a job like mine. Several entire floors of a wide skyscraper are filled with things like tents, kayaks, knives, and various other useful goodies like rope. A lot of my team members already have inscribed versions of these basic necessities from the trip to the Mercurials, but having already spent all my credits, I’ve decided that uninscribed versions work just as well for most situations. Sure, my tent won’t have built-in heating or other such nonsense, but at least I’ll have a tent!

  Besides, Celeste and I have determined that we are severely underutilizing our inventory. While there is an upper limit on the total mass I can store, it’s quite generous. And so, I’ve decided to fill it up. Sure, is something like a kayak strictly necessary for my job? Probably not — but who knows! Maybe there will be a water-related incursion one day, and my team will be saved because I have a kayak… I mean, I doubt it, but it could happen!

  Anyhow, I spend a few hours wandering around the job and picking up anything that seems like it could be useful. A standard bow and a full quiver of arrows, an array of knives, and a tent are among the most useful things I purchase from the store. The kayak, the fishing pole and kit, and the little camp oven are slightly less practical — but I bought them anyway!

  With the amount of money I’m making from my contract with the GDF and the amount I can potentially make by accepting my grandfather’s offer of sponsorship, uninscribed items such as these don’t really make a dent in my funds. Although, I’ll admit that all of my recent “retail therapy” has made the sponsorship deal much more appealing. Just do some photo shoots and end up with a lot of extra yen to spend on inscribed gear? Yes, please! The only thing stopping me from wanting to accept is how little I trust my grandfather.

  Eventually, I make my way out of the store, leaving a lot of very confused but very pleased workers behind me. More than one of them offers to help me move everything I just purchased — which I drag behind me using the handle on the front of the kayak — but I decline with a smile, telling them I already have people to help get everything where it needs to go. It’s a lie, of course, I put everything in my inventory as soon as I’m out of sight, but I don’t need to be that obvious that I’m a sentinel.

  Feeling quite pleased with myself, I make my way home with thoughts of tomorrow’s deployment playing in my mind.

  I’m at once excited and terrified for this mission. This is an amazing chance to keep getting stronger before the ticking clock on Shinara’s survival gets any lower, but it also has the potential to go horribly wrong. I know Baylee has been taking leadership classes from school for the last week, but as much as I like my friend, I don’t know that she’s qualified for something like this. Yet, the GDF is strained to its limits; the options are likely to send us or send no one and let all that food fall to the Volcora. In light of that, I’m glad we’re at least getting the opportunity to help.

  The second thing that has me nervous for this mission is the people we’re going to be protecting. This isn’t an incursion zone where we can pop in, fight the volcora, and pop out. Instead, we’re going to be protecting people over the course of days — likely while having small skirmishes. This causes several more challenges, the most prominent of which is that we won’t be able to stay in our assault states all the time. Unless we want to get completely bogged down with mana toxicity, the majority of the time we spend in the town will be spent as helpless as the civilians. I’ll have to keep an eye out and shift the second things look dangerous; hopefully, Celeste can help with that.

  Another major problem with protecting people is the people themselves. Simply put, people can be difficult, especially when they’re scared. These people will know that they will need to abandon their homes forever; that they’re on a ticking clock to get the harvest and get out. Managing them, and the wild emotions they’ll have, is going to be difficult.

  I worry that, when time comes to leave, there will be some that refuse to go. Some people, no matter how obvious the threat, will simply refuse to leave their homes. Do we force them to come, or do we just leave them to be torn apart?

  Shaking my head, I do my best to clear those kinds of thoughts from my mind. Once again, I find myself thankful that I’m not team leader. I’ll do everything I can to help advise Baylee, but I don’t envy her the hard decisions that are going to be required soon.

  After a night of tossing and turning, I find myself standing with my team and Team Firestorm in one of the massive, spatially expanded docking bays the GDF uses for mission staging. In places like this, the strain on the GDF is much more obvious.

  Teams of sentinels and soldiers rush into and out of transports, and ground crews hurriedly refuel and reequip the transports so they can be loaded and reused immediately — with the pilots often just staying in their craft for the next set of passengers to be loaded on. This particular docking bay is filled with the sounds of rotary blades whirling, men shouting orders, and other men crying out in pain as they’re rushed from an arriving transport to be delivered to medical.

  Seeing the number of soldiers arriving compared to the amount leaving breaks my heart. It’s clearly not uncommon for incursion zone teams to lose more than half of their contingent.

  Prof stands in the midst of the chaos, hands behind his back as he looks over our teams with a critical eye. Standing there, I can’t help but notice how old he looks. The gray in his hair and the stress lines on his face have aged him beyond his years.

  My first time meeting Prof, he’s constantly given me advice on how to stay alive. Now, I can see why. There’s a deep sadness behind his stormy eyes, the eyes of a man who's trained teenager after teenager to go fight in the war and has seen far too many of them return in a body bag, if they returned at all. In light of that, I can’t blame him for trying to squeeze survival tips into every moment. If just one tip got another sentinel home safely, then all of them were worth it.

  Seeing us all gathered, Prof takes in a deep breath before beginning. “You’ve already had your briefing this morning, so I’ll make this quick.”

  “The main goal for this mission is to preserve human life as best we can. The barley in Shirakaze can feed a little over a thousand people for an entire year, which is why it’s worth the investment of sending you. However, if you have to abandon the barley to save yourselves or the people of Shirakaze, then you should do so in a heartbeat. That barley isn’t worth anything if the people it would sustain are dead.”

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “Now,” Prof continues, “I don’t want you to feel like we’re just sending you out and abandoning you. Baylee and Trey should be maintaining regular contact with GDF command channels. They will be providing advice as well as support if required. Also, while it hasn’t been officially stated, if you get in too deep, I’m certain Kayne or Audrey could be convinced to come and save their students. While our support will be more distant than you’re used to, we will be with you. Is this understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” Baylee responds sharply, prompting a less-than-perfect parody of her response from the rest of us. Honestly, has she been watching too many war movies?

  Prof rolls his eyes at the lack of discipline — something I know bothers him. Well, the fact that we’re all undisciplined teenagers with magic powers and barely any training is the main thing that bothers him — and me, to be honest. I get it, though. If we can save lives now, then what justification is there for holding us back. I’m willing to bet that all of the sentinels in this generation, and the new one Althia mentioned is coming, will be put into field work before they have any kind of proper training. Like Kayne said, we’re just like those ancient farmers being handed a spear and told to march.

  “Good,” Prof says. “You all have the lists of townspeople who are willing to work with us to help protect their town. Those are just the ones on record, though. Shirakaze has nearly a thousand people living there, and I’m certain more will step forward to save their homes. When you arrive, I suggest you show off a little and convince some of the others to help you keep a lookout for volcora. Most able-bodied men and women will be required for the harvest, but I’m certain they’ll all chip in.”

  “With that, I wish you good luck on your mission. Get back safely.”

  I look up sharply at Prof's final words, meeting the older man’s eyes. Something within me, maybe my title, my astral path, or just some latent instinct, screams that something is wrong with Prof. Something that is slow and insidious, eating away at him as he watches sentinel after sentinel dies. I notice the tension in his arms — he’s fisting his hands behind his back — and the clench of his jaw. He’s afraid… and angry.

  For a moment, I wish I could step up and give the older man a hug. Take the time to thank him for all he does for us and remind him that it isn’t his fault that the sentinels he doesn’t have time to properly train don’t always come home. But I’m certain he already knows those things… that doesn’t stop the guilt. It doesn’t stop the pain.

  Ultimately, all I say when meeting his storm-gray eyes is, “We will.”

  The transport ride to Shirakaze will be the longest I’ve ever taken. It will take a few hours to fly us all the way up to near the northern front, where Volcora forces push in on more traditional military lines supported by the occasional sentinel.

  As with my other missions, everyone seems tense and alert as we depart the GDF Headquarters. However, as we slowly leave the shimmering spires of Shinara behind us, our tension starts to bleed away — not enough that no one is nervous, but enough that we’re nervous and bored.

  Troy’s team seems to have the worst of it. This will very likely be the first time any of them encounter a real volcora, and while fighting evil is all well and good on paper, it’s absolutely terrifying in practice. Not that the Volcora are necessarily all evil; I’m still confused about how and why a volcora overlord is working with the Reavers.

  For Team Picnic’s part, we’re a bit more relaxed. I highly doubt that the town is going to be attacked the second we’re dropped off, but that doesn’t mean we can put our guard down. The most important thing we’ll need to do is to make sure the town is properly organized. Honestly, I’m not sure how hard it will be to get people to listen to us. Baylee is good at giving orders and acting authoritative, but plenty of adults are great at ignoring high school-aged girls. Hopefully, showing off a bit, as Prof suggested, will help lend us some credibility.

  As such, during the long flight to Shirakaze, Baylee, Troy, and I find ourselves planning how we will best protect the town — an act made more difficult by Claire and Haruto having started bickering together and occasionally even dragging in members of Team Firestorm to their inane argument. No matter how much Haruto tries to be the reasonable one, Claire is just having way too much fun poking at him.

  Doing my best to ignore that, I continue my conversation with Troy and Baylee. “Okay, entrance aside, how are we going to organize ourselves to actually defend this much area? There’s going to be over a hundred people to protect per sentinel, and we can’t cover them all.”

  “So, we just all split up to cover as much ground as possible,” Troy says. “Maybe try and keep everyone in one section of town.”

  Baylee shakes her head, “Splitting up is definitely the wrong move. Volcora are primarily ambush predators; they’ll come in fast and hard on one person to take them out if they’re alone. While you or Serena could probably escape that, Melody or I would get overrun without support. I’ve actually been thinking about this, and I may have an idea.”

  Troy frowns at his idea being shot down immediately, “Which is?” he asks, just a hint of disdain in his voice.

  Baylee narrows her eyes at him but responds. “We break up into four teams. First, a defensive core. We leave three sentinels permanently stationed at the town to protect the people there. This should probably be our most immobile members, plus Haruto because he’s our main defensive specialist.”

  “Next,” Baylee continues, “we have two field squads of two sentinels each. They will roam around the barley fields while the townspeople do the harvesting, making sure that they stay safe. We need to keep your people with fire powers away from this role. The goal is to get the harvest, not to burn it down in the first fight we get into.”

  “Finally, we should have a mobile response team of our fastest members who can make the most difference in a fight. I think this should include you and Serena. Then, someone else with high mobility. This team would respond fast to emergencies. You and whoever else we assign would join the fight to help out immediately while Serena could provide cover and medical support.”

  I nod, smiling at how much thought Baylee put into her plan. The only problem is… “Two issues, I see,” I say, speaking up. “First, we’re going to need to sleep at some point — we can’t just leave the town vulnerable at night. Second, we might need to rotate people between the teams instead of keeping static members. If the mobile response team is also roaming, both they and the harvest teams will need to permanently stay in their assault states. We either build up too much mana toxicity, or we die in an ambush because we were in our rest states.”

  Baylee nods and smiles. “We don’t necessarily need to rotate people between teams, but that’s a good idea to consider. Here’s what I’m thinking. No one is ever going to be alone; that means that the field teams can keep one sentinel in their assault state and the other in their rest state at any given time. The one in their assault state would protect their partner long enough from them to shift and join the fight. For the defensive core and the mobile response team, they could keep one member in their assault state while the others stay in rest state.”

  “And for sleeping?” Troy asks, contemplating Baylee’s plan.

  “Field teams can just sleep at night with the workers while the other teams sleep in shifts,” Baylee says. “Our defensive core can just sleep in the town itself on shifts. Then, the mobile response team can just have its awake members join the defensive core at night while the others sleep. Mobile response sleeping in the day will be harder, but if we find a watch tower or someplace to look out from, one member at a time could just sleep there until they’re needed,” Baylee explains.

  I glance at her with a raised eyebrow, “Did you ask Prof about this?”

  Baylee blushes, “Some of it was me, but… yeah. I stuck around after we were dismissed yesterday so I could pick his brain about strategy.”

  I smile; Baylee is always as prepared as she can be. Once again, I consider just how lucky I am to have ended up with her as my team leader.

  “So,” Troy says, “what’s left to discuss?”

  Pulling out my phone, I glance at the time. “I think we just need to determine who is in what team and get everything there situated. Then, we land and take a look around. We can discuss our plans further with the mayor when we meet them.”