Changeling

The fateful time had come. Nestra was summoned to attend preparatory training for the Sword King enclave mission, and the first and most important one would be survival training.

Well, summoning was perhaps pushing it. She could do some remote learning in a training center for military augs, or she could stay at home. Let’s see.

Remote training center:

• Have to travel.
• Shit food.
• Strangers who might initiate small talk.
• Uncomfortable.
• Protected by augs of dubious motivation.

Her home:

• No need to move or, indeed, put on makeup or a bra.
• Stellar food.
• Only the people she likes can come and they have to message her first.
• Over fourteen pillows per Aszhii and climbing.
• Protected by a point defense naval gun designed to take down small ships and cruise missiles.

Yeah that wasn’t even a choice, so wearing clean pajamas and with a cup of nice Qahwe within her grasp, Nestra set out to learn the basics of survival. It would definitely be more exciting than negotiation and cultural sensitivity training, also on the program. She wasn’t a negotiator. When would that ever be useful? And the cultural sensitivity training was just designed to make her hate the enclavers less. The same guys who justified her participation by being so prejudiced against baselines that her existence offended them.

Anyway, survival. Survival came first. Those lessons would likely help her beyond the scope of the enclave expedition, especially with raids taking longer and longer.

Some of the content was pretty obvious. The same basic precautions that were taught in MaxSec also applied in the wilderness, unsurprisingly. Others were more specific, like camping and orientation. Those would be expanded upon during the in person training, which would happen after she completed all the online classes.

During the first day, Nestra studied the basics. To her surprise, there was a lot of emphasis on mental preparedness, on how to stay calm and so on. It felt like a critical part of the program, though she was barely concerned. It helped to have a backup monstrous self if a problem arose. The rest covered shelter, navigation, water, fire, and food, with nice questionnaires and tests designed to help identify flaws in her understanding. Nestra grew bored at 6PM, had an Aszhii nap, and then went raiding as Crescent in a rare low C-class cold biome. The enemies here were weird creatures that were really good at blending into the environment, which would be more annoying if Nestra couldn’t see their beady eyes following her as she approached. At least she got some cold resistance out of that.

The next day, Nestra validated the safety and mental preparedness modules before moving onto fire, which she also validated before lunch. It wasn’t very difficult considering all modern gear came with multiple ways of lighting fire. The difficulty was in building a safe fireplace that wouldn’t block sight or send all the smoke into her eyes. Or attract predators. Water was quickly completed as well, considering their new continent was rife with fresh water sources, which could easily be filtered even if they were not boiled or chemically purified. She worked on the shelter module before her nap, then it was time to meet Sereth.

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