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Reassignment was, thus far, proving difficult for Alpha-17. He’d adjust in time, of course; he was an an ARC trooper and trained to overcome circumstances others would consider impossible. But this? He was starting to think this might be beyond even him.
He walked into the training room and winced as a hundred toddlers - his hundred toddlers - turned their heads to look at him. A hundred pairs of wide, trusting eyes set in a hundred tiny, chubby faces. He was simply never going to get used to it.
“Men,” he said by way of greeting, and immediately corrected himself. “Cadets.”
“Good morning, sir,” the toddlers said in almost-perfect unison.
Alpha-17 winced again. They were all just staring at him. He wished they’d stop; he hadn’t been like this when he was their age, had he?
“We’re gonna continue where we left off yesterday,” he said.
He considered his next words. He probably should give them a proper command, but since he wasn’t putting them through an actual drill, it made more sense to just go straight into the exercise.
“Groups of five, form up,” he ordered.
“Yes, sir!” the cadets responded.
They jumped to follow his instructions, silently splitting up into groups. It took them 17 seconds, two better than the previous day. Alpha-17 felt slightly relieved; improved time meant there was no need for him to make them start over and switch places. The last time he’d done that, several cadets had gotten into fights over who got to be in whose group, and Alpha-17 hated having to deal with crying kids.
“Alright, cadets, you know what to do. One member of each group, step forward, the rest, step back.”
“Yes, sir!” the toddlers said again, and after a moment of pushing and shoving, one cadet from each group separated themselves from the other four.
Alpha-17 took a deep breath and steeled himself against the inevitable.
“Ready - be slippery,” he called.
There was a moment - one brief, beautiful moment - of quiet as the cadets looked at each other, their eyes gleaming. Then, the room broke into pandemonium. The toddlers pounced on each other, giggling and shrieking in high-pitched voices that made Alpha-17 wish he had his bucket on.
He watched the cadets as they went through the exercise - or, rather, as they played. As far as exercises went, “be slippery” was really very simple and almost more like a game than a proper exercise, which made it perfect for the youngest cadets. Out of each group, the cadet who had stepped forward had to try to stay out of the grasp of the other four while they, in turn, did their best to grab onto him and hold him still. Alpha-17 had introduced the exercise after multiple training sergeants had recommended it to him, but there were days he regretted it. It was just so chaotic.
A particularly piercing shriek caught Alpha-17’s attention; one of the cadets had been pinned down by his group and was now yelping for mercy. From the looks of it, the other four were too caught up in the game to care. Groaning to himself, Alpha-17 waded through the sea of small bodies to the cadet’s rescue.
“Okay, okay, that’s enough - let him go,” he said firmly.
One of the four didn’t let go quickly enough for Alpha-17’s liking and so he grabbed the kid by the back of his tunic, hauling him up to eye level.
“When I tell you to do something, you do it fast. Got it?” he growled.
“Yessir!” the toddler said.
Alpha-17 set the wriggling cadet down and looked around. Time for a quick lesson before the groups rotated.
“Reset!” he shouted.
It took 24 seconds for the cadets to stop and come to a rest. Alpha-17 was not impressed.
“Okay, first things first. When I give you an order, you jump on it. On the battlefield, the time it takes a trooper to follow an order can mean the difference between life and death for him and the rest of his company.”
The toddlers just stared at him. Were they taking this seriously? He couldn’t tell.
“Next. I just saw some pretty sloppy escapes. Seppies aren’t gonna think it’s funny if you try to lick their hands or bite them - “ he glared at one particular, appropriately nicknamed, cadet - “Nibbler. Do not forget that you’re gonna be wearing buckets later on. So no biting. Or licking.”
“Yes, sir!” some of the cadets said.
Not good enough. Alpha-17 groaned to himself again.
“What was that, cadets?”
“Yes, sir!” they shouted.
Much better.
“Alright, rotate within your groups.”
The cadets shuffled around a bit and Alpha-17 had to resist the urge to shout at them to move faster. They’re only a couple months into this, he reminded himself. At least they’d stopped trying to tickle fight each other in the middle of these kinds of exercises.
“Ready - “
“Sir?” one of the cadets shouted suddenly.
Alpha-17 glared at him, baring his teeth, but the cadet didn’t seem to mind a bit.
“Is this important enough to interrupt me?”
“Yessir,” the kid said breathlessly, bouncing up and down on his toes. “Can you do it too, sir?”
“What?”
“Do it with us, please,” another cadet chimed in.
“Do what?”
Alpha-17 looked around at the toddlers. They were all starting to wiggle now, apparently too excited to stand still like they’d been taught. As he’d taught them.
“You want me to do the exercise with you?” he said slowly.
“Yeah! We want you to be slippery with us, sir! Please, please!” the first cadet said eagerly.
“Please! Please!” the rest of the toddlers chorused, their voices overlapping til the racket made Alpha-17’s head ring.
“Fine!” he roared.
The cadets fell silent again almost instantly, but they were grinning ear-to-ear; for some reason, Alpha-17 found himself reminded of a pack of gdans.
“You really want me to do this, fine. Here’s how it’s gonna work. Divide into four teams; you’ll take turns trying to take me down within five minutes. Team with the most take-downs wins - but no biting or licking or your team automatically loses. Got it?”
“Yes, sir!” the cadets said and started running to get into their teams.
They’ll learn, Alpha-17 thought amusedly as he rolled his neck and shook his shoulders loose in preparation. Twenty-five tiny toddlers at a time against a battle-hardened ARC trooper? These kids were going to figure out real fast just how far they’d gotten over their heads.
“Ready?” he called. “And - start.”
The first team rushed at him in a blue blur of small bodies and at first, he had no problem shaking them off. Two minutes in, and he was almost feeling sorry for these kids.
But then, something changed. Some scarily unspoken communication seemed to pass among the cadets and they actually began to work together. Alpha-17 suddenly found himself being jumped on from every angle. It was a lot harder to shake off the small boys when he had three on each limb plus a couple crawling up his back, with the rest pushing and pulling at his feet.
Still, the first team didn’t take him down. Neither did the second, or the third, or even the fourth. But when the first team got their second turn - well, Alpha-17 wasn’t entirely sure what happened (admittedly it was hard to tell with a toddler koala-hugging his face), but somehow he was swept off-balance and ended up on the floor.
Twenty-five toddlers screamed with joy and jumped on his back as their fellow cadets cheered them on. Alpha-17 felt an unfamiliar sense of panic starting to bloom in his chest.
“Enough!” he wheezed, wincing as a particularly enthusiastic little boy drove both feet into his lower back, right between his armor plates. “Enough!”
The toddlers scrambled off and scampered to stand at rest against the wall. Slowly, Alpha-17 got to his feet.
“Good job,” he said.
He looked at the second team and swallowed. The kids looked ready to pounce. Why had he agreed to this, again?
“Second team, start,” he said, bracing himself for impact.
A little over an hour later, Alpha-17 limped down the hallway that led to the medical wing. He needed bacta, and possibly a stim. He really didn’t trust where Nibbler’s teeth had been; the kid put everything into his mouth.
He was never going to get used to training toddlers.