The shadows on the wall wavered from the flickering of the weak lights as he stared down at the floor, his head in his hands. Water dripped down onto the floor from the low ceiling of his room. The cramped, metal walls and the gloomy atmosphere of the room weren’t helping his mood much. It was not long before he’d need to go out and deal with those idiots in some attempt at teamwork. It was bad enough that he’d gotten put into a group that would obviously be filled with conflict, but stuffing them into a submarine 500 feet deep in the Competum Ocean was a completely disastrous idea. What aggravated him, however, wasn’t what the old geezers in charge tried to do – no, that was a noble idea – but the fact that the others wouldn’t even try. It’s not like it was impossible. Theirs was the only region that had so much disagreement. The walls flashed red as the signal light on the ceiling lit up and blared out a deafening alarm. That was the signal that they needed to have a meeting to discuss the current situation and what their plan was. The meetings were normally composed of back and forth insults on everyone’s race. He, along with a hispanic soldier, normally tried to get everyone to shut up and focus. He begrudgingly got up and slowly walked towards his door. He opened his door to reveal an equally depressing room with five men centered around a table with a periscope hanging above.
“Aziz! What took you so long?!” the bearded white man wearing a bicorne barked as Aziz continued forward to join the table.
“Hey, leave the kid alone,” A tall black man wearing a standard blue and black Coniuncta Empire soldier uniform input. “It’s not his fault he comes from a race of un-athletic nerds. Just like Mr.Ching-Chong over here.” He gestured to an Asian man wearing a black jacket and khakis.
“My name is Kevin, Chris, of course, you’re probably too stupid to remember that. And don’t group me in with the smelly brown guy. He probably got knocked out by his own stench on the way here.” He replied.
His thoughts were blurred with frustration and anger. “Kevin, shut it. I’m surprised you could see well enough through those lines on your face to get here.”
“Hey Aziz, what happened to not dropping to their level?” The Hispanic man beside him commented.
Aziz’s mind was jolted alert with realization that he’d fallen victim to the temptation to retaliate against an insult at his race, instead of keeping his cool and ignoring the blatant racism being thrown around.
“Sorry Eduardo, your right.” He turned his head so he was speaking to everybody. “The entire point of this group was to show our empire that if the other empires can fight with diversity, so can we. I suggest we calm down and focus on our mission.”
“Who said you could tell us what to do?” The thick bearded man asked aggressively.
“John, we weren’t assigned a leader because we were supposed to create our own order solely on teamwork. A leader is supposed to arise from within our squad without request.”
“Well then sit down, I want to be leader!” He demanded.
“Yes, because we’re all going to listen to the man wearing that hat.” Chris said with a smirk, arousing laughter from Kevin.
“Hey! A lot of powerful naval officers wore this hat!!!” John exclaimed.
“Yeah, three hundred years ago they did.” He retorted.
Aziz, at the moment, just wanted to get the meeting started. “Alright John, you wanna lead? Go ahead. Brief us on the situation.”
“You’re letting him?” Questioned Eduardo.
“Let’s just see how he does.”
“Alright,” John started nervously. “Well, we’re fighting the other empires, and uh…” Everyone stared up at him. He sat back down. “Go ahead Aziz.”
“Alright, now that all arguments are finished, can we get on with the meeting?”
“Yes,” the other four chorused.
“Good.” he continued. “Let’s start with an overview of how the world is organized and how we play a part in it.” He picked up a marker off the table and drew a circle with a map of the world, and circled five different areas. “As we all know, the world is separated into five empires. The Fortis Empire, the Statuit Empire, the Oppugnare Empire, the Defensivum Empire and the Coniuncta Empire.These nations are all at war simply for the reason of expansion.” He took a breath. He felt leadership skills swelling within him. “The mission we’ve been assigned is to take out as many enemies as possible. We need to be able to show everyone back home that race doesn’t matter in the big picture. We’re all of the Coniuncta Empire. Now, If we look at the radar,” he continued, gesturing at the blinking machine on the wall behind him. “We’ll see there are about ten vessels about three miles from here. John, you navigate us there. Eduardo, you man the torpedoes.” They both responded with a simultaneous “Right!”
With a determined look in his eye, Aziz declared “We’re going to win this war and show everyone that different races can unite together.”