The battle should be starting any time now and problems were already multiplying. Our order and placement for battle didn't come across to us until half an hour ago and there were definite problems, problems that took time to solve and problems that couldn't be solved in the time we had. First, the general had tried to put Mack in the eastern section with himself, facing the direction the enemy was coming from. Then entire groups who worked together well were separated and needed to be shuffled around. But mainly it was that the entire tribe of pyrimitate psychic aliens were standing outside with spears and sharpened sticks of wood, even the ones that obviously had no clue what they were supposed to be doing. The first couple problems were easy enough to fix, given time. The third super obvious problem, not so much.

The battle was setup fairly straightforwardly with the natives at the center of the group. The bunker to their north and they were and huddled up against it, hoping that it would keep any of the scouting force from that approach. Toward the east, facing the direction the enemy should be approaching from, was the General's group and those of us hand picked out to work with him. Donnie was one of those "lucky few" that got called out, on account of his ability to build both traps and primitive fortifications. To the south and west were the geeks, attempting to draw in and prevent any attacks from the other cardinal directions.

Fortunately our leader had flatly refused to join the group at the head of the battle, but fixing up everything else had taken so long that he hadn't had time to focus on the bigger picture. I got the dubious honor of following him around due to the fact that I had value in understood correct trigger discipline and small group tactics but lacked much value on the line itself. Apparently my gun really was that weak compared to what everyone else could do. I was joined by Jives, a lanky kid with Game skills related to large scale construction and who had a real world engineering major to back it up. His job was to coordinate people with crafting abilities, partly because he focused on large construction and partly because he didn't have enough levels to craft anything large himself. He was also a history buff and a fan of giant robot series.

Mack breathed a sigh of relief at seeing Jives return and asked him about the mission he had been sent out on. "So what did they say? We really need to readjust the groups. Us cosplayers don't have the numbers to surround the natives, especially with some of our most capable having been pulled away, and the natives don't trust us enough to work with us to form a united front. I'm afraid of our people getting accidentally hit in the back." And yes, somewhere along the line people had starting calling our entire nerd group the 'cosplayers'. I wasn't sure what to feel about that. I had never cosplayed in my life and I was proud of my nerd status.

"I've got bad news and worse news. The bad news is that the fighting has already started. I think it might be too late to move people around. The worse news is that whoever laid out the minefield is an idiot. They only laid things out toward the east, blocking the direct approach, and didn't surround the entire camp. You always leave an avenue of approach or else the enemy won't put themselves into an effective kill lane. That's like, medieval combat 101 there. Fortunately they don't seem to have the ranged weapons to catapult our position, the enemy is made up of hundreds of horned rabbit creatures." The guy looked and spoke like he was a mix of annoyed that anyone could make such a stupid mistake and proud that he had noticed it so easily.

Mack and I shared a look of horror at the revelation. He spoke first. "Fuck. That's a bigger error than I thought. Assuming they aren't complete idiots, the enemy won't just sit there with us getting the stragglers, they will spread out till they find a way around the mines and then swarm us. Johnny, I need you to help pull our people together to the south. We won't be able to hold otherwise and we won't be able to hold both there and the rear of our formation to the west. I need to go speak with the Chief about what's happening." His voice firmed with resolve as he spoke and he got ready to walk off to do his self-assigned duty. His assumption was good. If this was an army's scouting party then it wouldn't act like an undirected horde. But he had missed something vital that changed things completely.

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I spoke up before he could leave, shaking my head. "The General... this isn't a mistake he made. This was his plan. He plans to let the attackers kill us and leave his group mostly untouched. The first round of the Tutorial only ends when the attackers are all dead or when half of us are."

He turned to look at me with surprise, completely stopping his march away. "How do you know that?"

"I found out from the robot in the room where they tested our stats. I asked a lot of questions, that's why I was so late to join up with all of you." I answered calmly, the revelation I had just handed the group was hysteria inducing enough without me adding to it.

His face morphed from a morbid dawning understanding to indignation. It is amazing how a little context can change your understanding of everything. "Fuck." he finally said with a quiet finality. He took a breath, then raised himself up to take a more heroic stance. "Johnny, hold everyone together at the South as much as you can. I need to go see the Chief then I'll personally lead our people together from the West to join you. Jives, let our people at the East know what is going on and try to get them out to help us if they can. Just be quiet about it." He nodded at us and gave us one last note of encouragement before heading off. "Lets get this done."

I turned from our place in the South-West to head toward the south as Jives continued on past the group. The battle was already underway when I arrived and I saw the rabbits he had been talking about. The single horned ones were fairly straightforward in how they tried to charge at us, but were ultimately predictable enough to be easy targets. The dual horned ones were more tricky, as they dodged about. Their horns glowed in a small variety of colors but, luckily, I didn't get a chance to tell what that meant if it hit someone.

From there my job was to shoot the bunnies and enforce trigger discipline when one of the more mele types went out to deal with a bunny rabbit that got too close. You would think that "don't shoot at the guy who is on your side, even if you think you can hit the target right beside him" would be easy to remember; but adrenaline was high and overconfidence made people take dumb risks. As for the bunnies themselves, they were small enough to be taken out by a hit from even one of my bullets. But that was the trick, you had to hit them. They were small and moved erratically, even the ones that were changing at us. More than a few of our people started having trouble, especially the mages. I ran out of ammo in my weapon and realized that a second full clip would have been a good thing to buy. I blame my background; video game bullets all come without the hassle of loading the individual bullets into the clip before reinserting it into your gun and I had been in a rush. I ended up taking four or five shots before taking a break to reload, assuming that we weren't getting swarmed by a wave of them, so that I would never hit half ammo and have to worry about needing a bullet and not having it. The number of enemies kept going up slowly over time but we never ended up overrun due to the stream of people we were getting in from the West.

I don't know how long this went on for but I was glad to see when Donnie started approaching from the East. He didn't look good, but at least he was alive. When he saw me it was like a new fire had been lit within him and he ran over with renewed enthusiasm before looking at me with haunted eyes. "He killed them. He just shot them dead like it was nothing. Then he looked right at me."

"Calm down." I said, trying to be calm and help him get under control. "Who did whom kill, and what happened?"

"The general, and then one of his men." he said, calming down a bit but still clearly shaken. "The builder guy, the one who was running errands for Mack, he came by and talked to one of the other guys that got conscripted by the general. I don't remember his name. It might have been Larry or Lars or something with an 'L'. It got loud and the General pulled out his hand gun and shot them both. Then Sam came running up and all he did was nod his head for one of the others to shoot her too. Then he looked at me and it was all I could do to look down and grab another piece of metal to turn into one of those traps I've been making. You know the ones: you can throw them and they land ready to go off."

He shook his head before continuing. "I waited until he was distracted and then ran over here. I had to tell you all what had happened, what was happening. The boss of the animals showed up. He is surrounded by larger cat and even bigger wolf monsters. I started running when he started attacking the General and his men. But, last I saw, the enemy was being led away from his group. He is sending the boss right at us."