Well, at least they hadn't thrown him in prison. He was sure they were 
keeping an eye on him, but so what. He wasn't planning on doing anything
suspicious. Apparently, they'd had people trip the cuteness imagers before
and NOT turn out to be symps, and when the gate guard failed to come up
with any good reason for his suspicion, they let him sign up.

NoCo administration was more helpful than he'd've expected -- he went in to
ask if they could officially withdraw him from his classes at CWRU (no sense
in getting F's added to his transcript, was there?) and they seemed 
positively eager to help. It was probably just part of the general atmosphere
of, well, happiness.

"What's everyone so happy about, anyway?" he asked one of the other recruits.

"Bill finally came back."

"Oh." Well. That explained... nothing at all. [sigh] He hated happy people.

Antibunnies... (nasty things, but better than being a bunny) std. issue 
fireaxe... picking courses. Strange list. He picked Fireaxe, hand-to-hand,
bunny spotting, covert ops, db dynamics, and battle techniques. Jello making?
What the hell? Banter 101? Not! He got enough of it just reading the damn
newsgroup (on a public terminal, they took his portable along with his 
laser, as a precaution) without taking a course in it.

He thought of taking popping technique, but shuddered to think of what the
lab might involve. He was pretty sure... okay, he was SURE he could kill in
combat, but the whole hands-on thing just didn't appeal to him.

But even before classes started, he got the basic recruit treatment. Bunks,
mess hall, drill seargeant...

The drill seargeant was, well, a drill seargeant. A stereotypical drill 
seargent. Aaron had to go out of his way not to laugh. And only occasionally
succeeded. At least the pushups and laps were getting him in shape. He really
hoped classes started soon.

He wondered what Sylvie was doing...

                ******  ******  ******

"Go away, you stupid ferret! I'm a squirrel, not a bunny! Haven't you ever
 seen a squirrel before? [flick]"

"Let's get out of here! [chitter] Those things are killers!"

"Don't worry, they can't climb trees."

"Are you SURE about that?"

Sylvie shrugged. "No, not really. [flick]"

"[chatterchittertwitchchatter] RUN AWAY!"

Sylvie looked down at the ferrotti, and glanced at the retreating squirrels.
Wimps. Like they couldn't outclimb a ferrotti. They had bounce packs, even.

She looked back down at the silent ferret. "So watcha want, ferret face?"

--
Aaron Mandelbaum        (in the army now...)