The two officers stood outside the bus, ready to throw me onto the ground. I decided to take the initiative and jumped out of the bus on my own. The officers laughed and thanked me for saving them the trouble. Lifta followed my lead and jumped out as well, but Madame Farrah von Haus quietly and gracefully walked her way out of the vehicle and stepped out onto the dark pavement with her head held high.

Neither of the two officers treated her with anything but respect and reverence. Made sense that she got special treatment; she wasn't a recruit, after all.

With a smile and a wave towards me, Farrah moved on towards the colonel's office while I and the rest of the recruits stood in a square-ish formation. The two large officers inspected every one of us, occasionally punching someone in the gut as punishment for some unmentioned violation. After they finished inspecting us, they shouted "FOLLOW, MAGGOTS!!!" and led the way to the barracks.

As we marched (without anyone actually ordering us to march) I saw some armored cars, tanks and a few battle-copters. All of our vehicles were covered in government-approved graffiti, along with some fake skulls meant to intimidate the enemy.

I also saw a large banner that said "DOWN WITH THE ZYMOS PURITY PARTY!" written with great big golden letters against a blood-red background. Subtlety was not our propaganda minister's strong point.

When we reached the barracks, we were subjected to medical exams and measurements for uniforms. The doctor who examined me was a very short little lady who was bald and had no hands. She wrote her report with a pen held in her mouth, which said:

Full name: Samantha Cole

Height: Average

Weight: A teensy bit overweight

Stamina: Average

Eyesight: 20/20, no corrective goggles necessary

Bloodtype: A+

Allergies: None

Phobias: Marmalade, margarine

Conclusion: Fit for service, but must be kept away from the military kitchens due to aversion to margarine. Not allowed to open enemy rations in case it contains marmalade or margarine.

I wasn't expecting them to know about my phobia of those two awful sandwich spreads, but it was a good thing that they took measures to keep me from touching them.

The short armless doctor directed me to the changing room, where I put on my cheaply-made gray uniform made mostly of cotton and some kind of imitation polyester. My old clothes were thrown into an incinerator with the words "YOU ARE WARRIOR NOW" carved on its metal lid. I wondered if my daughter Angel was also forced to destroy her old attire. What a waste of good clothes.

Without warning, a blunt metal object was pushed into my back, and a loud voice boomed behind me: "MOVE. WASTE NO TIME, RECRUIT!! STAND IN THE FORMATION AND WAIT FOR ORDERS!!"

I rushed to the exit and saw hundreds of other soldiers standing perfectly still. I ran for a gap between a very tall cat-woman and a short dog-lady. As we stood there under the cloudy sky, no one said a word, out of fear that they would be struck for doing something they were not ordered to do. The only body parts that could move were my eyelids, my eyeballs and my lungs. As my eyes darted, I could see Lifta standing behind a frighteningly-thin wolf-woman. Lifta looked absolutely nervous.

When the sun was low enough to shine directly into our poor eyes, someone covered in medals from clavicle to ankle walked in front of us and stood on some kind of crate. Her hair was black and her eyes were golden, her skin covered in scars. She spoke with great authority:

"My name is Colonel Killerbeam. I do not expect you all to perform admirably in the field of battle, but I do expect you to at least shoot in the right direction. Truth be told, none of you is expected to do much other than distract the enemy from our real fighting force. You are bullet sponges, essentially.”

Such honesty was quite rare among the military's top brass. Speeches like this one was probably why.

Killerbeam continued, “However, if any of you happen to actually perform better than we expect, we will promote you into a true fighting unit. Maybe the Screaming Harpies or the Ender Snakes. Better pay, better food and more comfortable uniforms. Perhaps you intend to run away right now, or ten seconds before you are thrown into the great maw of the hungry beast we call war. Regardless, we will kill you for being a deserter. There is no turning back, not until we win this stupid war. Do you understand?!"

No one said anything, but we did nod our heads. That was enough for the colonel.

Killerbeam continued, "Since you will all be deployed at night, we will begin combat training at exactly 20 00 hours tonight! We will give each one of you a standard rifle, a standard banana and a standard onion sandwich. If you are so stupid that you end up getting killed by your own weapons in this training exercise, your family will NOT be compensated. This is an army! The only ones who are supposed to kill you are the enemy and no one else! DISMISSED!"

Though the Colonel said "Dismissed", none of us had any idea where we were supposed to go. It turned out we didn't even have any beds, just a bunch of sleeping mats. No roofs, no walls, with the sole exception of the washroom. THE washroom. We only had ONE washroom. The buses that took us here had no toilets, and it was a LONG ride.

Even before training began that poor toilet already turned into a frightening monument to everything wrong with the world. Some of the cat and dog people had the smart idea of digging a latrine using their claws. Needless to say, the dog and cat-people quickly became popular among this battalion of bullet sponges.

I searched for Lifta and found her speaking with a pair of cat-ladies. There was one with brown spots and yellow eyes, and another one with white fur and blue eyes. The brown-spotted one's body was the athletic sort, firm and lean muscles along with a posture that suggested a rough-and-tumble type. The white-furred woman was just the opposite, granted a frail physique and a slight hunch.

I introduced myself to them. “Hey. I'm Sam. Who are you two?” I said with a reasonable amount of confidence.

The brown-spotted cat-lady beamed, and grabbed my hand. She shook it aggressively as she spoke. “Hi! I'm Hilda, and this is my sister Drew!”

The shorter of the two raised her hand and softly said “Hello.”

We naturally flowed into a quick conversation. I found out that Hilda and Drew were best friends from middle school and were inseparable ever since then. Hilda's family even adopted Drew into the family, so they were legally sisters. A heart-warming family tale that I genuinely hoped would not end with either of them dead in the middle of a battlefield because of the damn conscription.

Hilda was a hunter, specifically a bear-slayer. She would spend days in the woods looking for a bear big and meaty enough to send to the butcher's. As such, she was no stranger to discomfort. However, her sister Drew was a total bookworm who dreamed of becoming a renowned mathematician. She was a very cool, rational person, but it was apparent that she was dependent on luxuries like cigarettes and coffee. Hilda volunteered for the fight because she was the kind of person who was addicted to danger. Drew put up her hand at the same time because she figured Hilda needed someone to stop her from rushing into a trap.

Lifta asked the two sisters, "So do you know anything about how to fight? In a war? I'm frankly terrified and I don't know that much."

Drew was about to say something, but Hilda spoke first and answered with enthusiasm: "Well, I know for certain that the hunting rifle I use back home is a modified version of what they give to conscripts like us. It's called a Fangbolt. It's a single-shot, high-caliber rifle that almost guarantees a kill if you hit a person at center mass."

Lifta was a little confused by the words she was hearing. "High-caliber? Center mass?"

I was actually familiar with those terms myself, but figured I should let Hilda keep talking.

Hilda explained: "High-caliber means the bullet is really, really big. Like, the ones we'll be using, they're half an inch wide, diameter that is. It's huge and heavy, perfect for killing bears and really overkill for a person. Center mass just means, er, the middle of the body I think. I prefer aiming for the base of the neck, myself. People tell me it's too tiny a target, but I've had loads of practice."

“Bears have bigger necks than people though”, quipped Drew.

It was my turn to ask. "So the guns we'll be using, what's the difference between those and the hunting version?"

Hilda replied, with the same level of energy, "The military version of the Fangbolt comes with an accessories kit in the buttstock, as well as rails for scopes and a place to attach a bayonet at the front. Also, the wooden parts are treated to resist termites."

"We'll also be using bananas," Drew sighed.

"Yeah, that's strange. I thought they were banned”, I noted.

Drew nodded and continued to speak, "They repealed the Anti-Banana Treaty. The Zymos Purity Party started using bananas for artillery and they refused to stop, so every other nation basically said 'screw it let's remind them why these things were banned'."

Bananas were powerful explosives that would obliterate a person's entire body if it was lit on fire and thrown at someone. However, they were banned from military use because exploded bananas remained a hazard for years to come, as the banana-wave radiation would continue to burn living tissue. Despite that, banana remained a popular fruit. As a safety measure, bananas were often served with ice cream or gelato, the difference of which I never really bothered to understand.

Lifta then spoke, "What do you gals know about the Zymos Purity Party? I never read much news but I heard they're a crazy bunch of racists."

"Not racists, ultra-nationalists. They don't care what race you are so long as you're a Zymogian citizen," Drew replied. "Of course, they are still guilty of what the upper government types call 'ethnic cleansing', which, I assure you, is not clean at all."

Ugh. I hated it when politicians tried to make mass murder sound like something a janitor would be doing. It would be rude to call it genocide, they would say, and so they just gave it a better name for it. Of course, considering how our nation actively sent child soldiers into minefields, giving an alternative phrase to the word 'genocide' seemed even more absurd to me.

Suddenly, a very loud gong was rung, and a bunch of slim and pale people in gray uniforms appeared from the ground. They had been waiting down there below the earth, listening to our chit-chat. Despite having erupted from the soil, their clothes were spotless. Must have been that military discipline at work.

One of them identified herself as Sergeant Honeysuckle, a name which led to quite a lot of snorts, chuckles and guffaws. The sergeant ignored the giggles and proceeded to direct us to our training course, which was thankfully only a couple dozen paces away.

The training course had several layers. The first layer was the Fangbolt shooting range. It was devoid of grass, with tens of straw dummies lined up. The bullets had no trouble going through the dummies, like a hot knife through butter.

We were all taught the basics of the battle rifle; how to clean it, how to carry it properly, how to aim, how to reload, the works. Unfortunately it was all done in the space of a few minutes, so most of us couldn't catch all of it. Hilda held the rifle like a natural, though, so people started asking her for tips. She gladly obliged.

We were allowed to shoot our rifles a maximum of three times. My turn came up, and I took aim, making sure to line up the rear sight with the front, and squeezed the trigger. A very loud BANG rang out, and the bullet hit the bullseye taped into the dummy at about a hundred metres away. I removed the spent bullet casing and reloaded another round. Same as before, only with a much further target this time. Two hundred metres. BANG! I missed the dummy's designated target areas, but I did hit its right arm off. Close enough.

Last shot. I ejected the empty casing as before, and threw in one more bullet. I took aim at one of the moving targets attached to a conveyor belt. Another BANG, another hit. I couldn't help but smile. I thought “Maybe I got a chance of surviving this war after all.”

Honeysuckle nodded with an approving grunt and directed me to the banana training course. The sergeant put a wax banana-shaped object in my left hand and set it on fire. Without hesitating, I threw the flaming almost-fruit into a fake window labeled 'BANANA HERE'. Honeysuckle said that was 'adequate', and that was enough training. If bananas were as dangerous as they said, I would never waste a second flinging it at someone else.

When the short bout of training was over, we were all corralled into cube-shaped hovercrafts with no roofs. Me, Lifta, Hilda, Drew and a few strangers were crammed into the floating metal box. Without much fanfare or even a word of goodbye from our superiors we were sent offshore to invade the beaches of Zymos.

It was a long ride, filled with pointless chit-chat and punctuated with mumbled prayers. I made a gentle, whispered prayer in the hopes that God would be in a good mood for once and let me live through this.

At some point we all fell asleep.

Hours later, we were all woken up by the sound of gunfire and explosions. Someone yelled at us to jump off the hovercraft, and we did so, right before the vehicle sank into the deep sea. Under the starry night sky we swam towards the enemy's homeland, welcomed by a torrent of bullets.

At least it wasn't raining.