When the squad gathered for their morning routine. They showed up in the training room. Instead of Doomslayer waiting for them, it was the lieutenant.
"What is going on?" Soshal asked as she was the first to step into the room. Dan looked around to make sure everyone was there before making a response. "Sargeant Doomslayer is meeting with the Captain and other leadership. I will fill in for the training today."
"What happened? Is he coming back?" Bexy asked.
"I can't talk about it yet. You'll probably find out more in a couple days. For now, let's just focus on training."
The next day Dan didn't have any more answers. Training continued as usual, though. Except they had a much more competent instructor. Dan was patient and all the ways he needed to be, chastised and gave criticism when it was fair and useful. Sevs knew that this wasn't a sustainable solution, but he felt the last two days of training were more useful than the previous month.
***
They actually didn't hear about Sergeant Doomslayer until his replacement arrived. When they knew they were going to be introduced to a new sergeant, there were many rumors about why.
"Maybe he ascended," Jason said. "We haven't had anyone around us ascend so far in this world. We don't know how they deal with it."
"Maybe he just got kicked out. He's a pretty awful sergeant. I have trouble believing that his running through an enemy ship and then getting ambushed was how he would ascend. More likely, he just chose not to respawn." Carl said.
Sevs was surprised by Carl's words. Carl was normally very quiet and reserved and didn't join in the usual banter with as much spiciness as displayed in those few simple sentences. Sevs couldn't disagree with the sentiment, of course. He doubted anyone could, but it was still surprising to hear his voice in such a manner from Carl.
Privately Sevs also thought it was unlikely that Doomslayer had ascended. The ones he had known usually felt like they had an aura of peace or contentment about them. Like they had stagnated in the game and or were happy where they were. Those that felt like they still had more to do usually wouldn't ascend even if they had the option. Though Sevs had never heard of someone choosing to reroll a character and then ascend. Presumably, if that was their mentality, the system just wouldn't offer them the chance to ascend.
When no one moved to disagree with Carl, Sevs spoke up. "I think it's just as likely he chose to reroll. It didn't seem like he was very happy here."
"Maybe," Bexy said thoughtfully. I have trouble believing that he would leave us in peace, though. I'm pretty sure he just enjoyed torturing us more than actually playing the game.
"I don't know," Sevs disagreed. "I think he was honestly trying his best."
Seeing Carl give him a dirty look, he continued on. "Don't get me wrong, he wasn't a good Sergeant or anything, but I think he might have just been broken. This world is hard, and we were worried about that. Who knows how long he had been here and how many hardships he had to endure."
Now all of them were looking at him like he had been hit in the head. "Oh, come on guys, I know he sucked, but I don't think he was evil."
Jason scoffed, and the rest of them just shook their heads. Sevs just let it go. He mostly agreed with him, but really he just didn't want to speak badly of someone who wasn't around to defend himself. Still, he couldn't overstate his excitement with the change.
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Still, when they made it to the briefing room, they were called to. Lieutenant Dan was standing with the new Sergeant. This sort of briefing was introduced, and everything was going well. Sevs was reasonably content with their new Sergeant. He seemed to be reasonably competent and had none of the issues Doomslayer did. That was all fine until Lieutenant Dan let them know that Doomslayer had ascended.
When they left the room, Sevs didn't speak to anyone. In fact, he didn't say very much for several days. Instead, he was retreating into himself. He knew this was not good. This was not a sign of progress. Was a regression to his old ways, especially once all of his initial teammates had ascended. But how could he not? His thoughts were full of questions like why and how it just didn't seem fair. Someone who didn't try didn't take himself seriously, didn't care about the people around him could ascend when people like him, who had been stuck here for who knows how long, couldn't move on.
He just couldn't understand why. There were only a few possibilities. It could be that the selfish understood themselves better in this understanding of themselves and allowed the machines to better map them. It could be that they were just simpler people. It could be that they're more typical people, and there was less effort to map out their eccentricities. Sevs, I wanted to think, is one of these things. Some "negative" traits made it easier for everyone else. But that wasn't what his fears told him.
No the doubt that seeped into him was more about what was wrong with him. The questions that had plagued him for countless years. Why was he still here?
***
Sevs had come out of a shell, but it took a couple weeks. The only thing that really brought him out was the rest of his team. Jason never seemed to leave him alone, and Bexy wasn't far behind. They made sure to include him in everything and never let him feel too alone. Even if they weren't able to understand what was going on, the fact that they didn't abandon him gave him hope for the future.
Eventually, he got to know the new Sergeant. He was a boring person, to be honest. He had neither the presence and competence of Zim nor the issues that Doomslayer did. He had a personality like wet paper. He was reasonably competent at training them, and their performance in the war games against the other squad skyrocketed. Instead of being awful, they were about average. It also didn't require subs to step up and lead them nearly as often as the new Sergeant would rarely get killed first. The few times in the last couple of months that they had to repel boarders, everything had gone textbook.
Since there was no real stress, Sergeant Deutsch never really made much of an impression on Sevs. And he never got the chance to. It was several months later. After lots of training and improvement, his squad finally felt like a squad. They had no specializations, but they had learned to move and work together fairly well. That was lucky because otherwise, they would have been completely unprepared.
Things started to go wrong when they were repelling what seemed to be a normal raid at first. As they had no specialties, they usually didn't hold a position, as every other squad with specialists in them would. Usually, they would end up roaming and helping clean up anything they got through. Which was one of the more complex tasks, honestly, but it was best suited to them compared to having a heavy gunner take up a fortified position.
As they worked their way through the ship, this felt different. The ship rocked continuously. Not just from the impact of the landing ships, but they were taking fire from what must have been real guns or at least some sort of heavy artillery from other large vessels.
After the first few engagements, something became clear. There are a lot more enemies. A lot more enemies than even the first time. They encountered heavy resistance everywhere. It seemed that they were outnumbered on their own ship. The six of them and their Sergeant ran down hallway after hallway. They eliminated many enemies; however, whenever they would come across a firing position that should have been occupied by their own men, it was a 50-50 chance that they were wiped out. Having sustained such losses made the defense almost negligible.
Then the sergeant went down. It snapped Sevs truly out of his daze, something he didn't realize he was completely in. Again, they are left leaderless. And again, everyone looked at him. He gathered everyone together, grouped them up, and began to move them. Their efficiency honestly wasn't diminished at all. They had one less weapon to fire, but it didn't seem like they had lost their leader; they might have lost any one of their members. They continued their rounds, fighting off each enemy that they came across. All the while, the ship continued to rock.
They were starting to take hits. Carl was carrying his weapons oddly, and Jason was limping. Bexy, Soshal, and Roberts were just tired. Sevs was considering having them go back to the respawn points to check to see if their Sergeant was up or if they could get a reprieve. That was when the ship's Captain came over the loudspeaker demanding everyone make for the escape pods.
Things only went downhill from there.