(AR training pods, UNSSD Tokyo Base, October 2132)

Dr Sheldon Allen excitedly walked into the room.

“I see that you all have ended the session? How was it? Is it to your lik—” he stopped, seeing the solemn expressions of the Squad Artemis operators in the room, and a furious Lieutenant Colonel Richard Williams, the UNSSD Tier 1 operator in charge of overseeing this new training infrastructure.

Richard is different from the other UNSSD Tier 1 operators under the UNSSD Special Operations Command (SOC), instead, he hails from another branch that is not under the military - the intelligence agency of UNSSD, Intelligence and Alien Operations (IAO). 

Whether the IAO or the SOC is the better special operations community has always been a source of contention within the Tier 1 pipeline. The politically correct answer? Both. Both are good. 

Nonetheless, the IAO does have a slight negative vibe within UNSSD, after all, no one knows what these guys are up to 99.99% of the time. All in the name of security. 

Seeing Dr Allen being stunned and at a loss, Lieutenant Colonel Zhou Xiao Tian, Richard’s fellow operator, a commissar of the UNSSD SOC, smiled, assuring Dr Allen that it was a good demonstration, and brought him outside to discuss further implementation of the project and to suggest improvements.

Once the 2 stepped out, Richard exploded at Aya. His 1.9m tall height looming over the 1.73m tall girl.

“WHAT THE F*** WERE YOU ALL THINKING?! BLATANT DISREGARD OF ORDERS TO FULFILL YOUR OWN F***ING HERO FANTASIES? IS THIS HOW YOU LEAD YOUR UNIT, CAPTAIN?” he snapped.

“Sir, we—” said Maia.

“AM I TALKING TO YOU?!” snapped Richard, angrily reprimanding her.

“No discipline and no sense of cooperation! I don’t care if you are the best of the best! If you can’t follow basic instructions, you are no better than simpletons with guns and magic!”

Maia pursed her lips, keeping it shut.

Richard then turned to the other UNSSD SOC operators.

“Comrades!” he said. “As the Tier 1 operators of the UNSSD, are we mankind’s finest? Are we the tip of the sword of mankind?”

“Sir yes sir!” replied the other operators in unison.

 “AND WE NEED EVERYONE’S EFFORTS TO DO SO, RIGHT?” he continued.

 “YES!” yelled the other operators.

Richard then turned to the Squad Artemis members, raising his finger at them accusingly.

 “But these jokers don’t think so! They think their judgement is the best! They think they are superheroes that will save the day! Ordinary folks like us are inferior to them! Because they are “bred for war”.”

 A few snickers erupted from the crowd.

 “What do you all suggest we do?” asked Richard.

 “Punish them!” yelled a voice in the crowd, and many soon concurred.

Aya bit her lips, trying not to let her tears of shame and anger fall. The rest of her “siblings” are mostly the same, with the exception of Walter, whose face remained in a half-smile, and another one of them:

A cough stopped the crowd’s chattering.

Richard turned, looking at a hooded figure in a corner of the room, distant from the rest of her “siblings”. She is more than 2m tall, looking at Richard with one of her purple eyes. Her 2 pairs of dragon horns are visible underneath her hood. Unlike other Dracos however, her skin is not one similar to human tones, instead, it has a slight orangish tint to it.

Seeing Artemis 100 “Mistral” sent chills down Richard’s spine. Despite being colleagues for almost 5 years, this particular member of Squad Artemis always gave him bad vibes, the aura giving off from her is one of mystery, and for someone whose speciality is in intelligence gathering, the incomprehensible unknown always made him uneasy.

Just then, Xiao Tian returned. Seeing the tense atmosphere in the room, he pulled Richard aside.

“This is now an issue of morale,” he said. “Let me handle this.”

Richard shrugged. “Don’t go easy on them, whatever consequences there are I will bear with you.”

Xiao Tian chuckled. He then turned to the crowd.

“While everyone is understandably angry over the whole debacle, I have a question to pose: why do you think they did it? Surely, it’s not out of simple stupidity, right? I mean as you all have mentioned, we are supposedly elites.”

Murmurs erupted from the crowd as the other operators discussed the situation, trying to make sense of Xiao Tian’s point. He then turned to Aya, bending down slightly, looking at her in the eye level.

 “Perhaps, you would like to enlighten us on your decision?” he asked