Dagger looked around the common room to see what everyone was doing. At a table near the one that her and Echo were occupying there was an intense looking game of Holochess. When her gaze finally came back to Echo he was pulled out a few data pads and laid them out in front of him.

He looked back up and saw Dagger's slightly tilted head, "reg manuals. Want to study?"

"I didn't take you for a nerd," she said bluntly.

His mouth turned up at the comment, "and I didn't take you for a mindless bullet stopper."

She let out a breath of air, a sort of laugh. She nodded her head and took one of the reg tablets, opening up the screen and scrolling to the first information page. It read, HOW TO RESPOND TO MEDICAL EMERGENCIES IN COMBAT ZONES. She settled into her seat and began to read, checking on the radio every once in a while.

Even in the loud and semi-crowded common room Dagger found herself relaxing out of the strict guard she always kept when around any other living soul. As she looked over the reg tablet she started to nod her head to the jazzy upbeat music, her thoughts began to wander.

She needed to start training more, she wanted to be stronger for when they started going on missions, she didn't want to be a weak link to the unit. It was starting to dawn on her that it would be very hard for her to do some things like battle with organic life forms in close combat.

Clankers she could handle, but if she had to go hand to hand with something with a bigger brain who happened to be that much bigger than her she may be in for a nasty fight. She would have to start learning new and more advanced techniques.

That led her to another thought, when was she going to find enough alone time to practice and do all of the things that she needed while she had all of the training throughout the day. Any free time during the day, such as now she would want to spend with her unit. They were fun to watch, even if she didn't feel comfortable interacting as heavily with them yet. She sighed, still having no answer for when she could get in extra training time other than at night as she had the previous night.

Echo glanced up every once in a while from his reading of the reg manual in front of him. Most of the time it was to check up on Dagger or to watch his movements. It seemed subconscious, but now and again Dagger would reach over to the radio and turn up the song a single click of volume. He smiled lightly, those songs must have been ones that he liked.

For Echo, it was nice to see the new kid relaxing a bit, his shoulders and body language weren't so tense. That poor guy was going to give himself issues with how guarded he was. He was going to do something to change that Echo thought to himself.

Just as Dagger started to sink a bit further into his chair, there was a loud call from a brother near the door, "Officer on Deck!"

Great, there goes progress, Echo thought as all of them shot up from their various positions to attention. Captain Rex strode into the room, "unit workout will be in a half an hour. We are doing field prep in the main hangar."

The Captain's demeanor was rushed and even stressed, like he had received bad news. Echo let out a sigh and hoped that everything was ok, something had to be up with training being pushed up in the schedule. Last minute change in plans didn't occur often. They certainly didn't occur without a reason.

If Echo were a betting man he would say that the war needed the 501st back on the front lines and training had to be picked up at least for the day. He would bet it was for last minute performance checks.

Rex left the room and everyone started to pack up and head back to the barracks to get on their armor. Dagger and Echo made their way to the hangar. She was glad that they already had all of their armor on. It always took her a long time to put it on by herself.

~B~

Rex and Cody were setting up various obstacles and filling weighted backpacks for the coming practice. They both looked up as Dagger approached them, boots clunking softly on the duracrete.

"Good job at blaster practice today Dagger," the commander said.

She nodded in acknowledgement before asking, "is there anything I can do to help set up since I am early?"

The two officers shared a look and Rex said, "we are pretty much done here you might as well just start stretching while you wait for the others to arrive."

Rex fought with himself internally on whether or not there was enough time to talk to Dagger now. He waited too long and his decision was made for him. Soon enough the others did arrive and the open training court was filled with noise from the many soldiers talking and joking.

When the officers were finished with their set up, Rex hopped up onto a large crate and called for everyone to circle around him. He started briefing them on the obstacle course they were to complete. They had to do an equipment carry, a low crawl across a mat, go over different hurdles and cross high bars with their weighted packs.

While it wasn't a competition, they would be completing it in their buddy pairs and had to complete it in a certain amount of time to be able to effectively pass the obstacle course to meet the training objectives. It was meant to simulate different scenarios they would encounter in the field and challenges they may face.

With the brief and stretching done they lined up in their pairs to go through the course. Echo and Dagger were about third in line. Echo bounced on his feet in excitement while Dagger stood ramrod straight only clenching and unclenching her gloved hands every once in a while. They strapped on their packs and cinched them down to stay secure.

On the order to go they both took off like bullets, sprinting when they could and going through other parts as quickly as they could. The equipment carry and then the low crawl went by quickly. Their packs rustled with their movements. Both Echo and Dagger were huffing with slight excretion from the fast pace they had set.

They reached the hurdles and Dagger realized just how high up they were. They came up the bottom of her ribs while on Echo they only came up to his hips. She only paused for a moment before doing the only thing she could think of on the spot. She jumped up and flung herself at the obstacle. Hugging it she threw her leg over it and rolled over. Echo, who had been midway through getting over it in a more natural high step, immediately started laughing.

"Don't laugh at me!" Dagger hissed, but since she was running out of breath there was little bite behind her words which only made him laugh more. They went through the rest of the obstacles Dagger kept up as well as she could. It wasn't that she was slow, she just couldn't keep up with the obstacles that were taking longer for her to overcome.

The pair reached the high bars and Echo quickly jumped up and started swinging up the bars. The delay of having to wait for him to get ahead gave her enough time to get set up on the bars.

The high bars were in a pyramid style, much higher in the middle before sloping down again. He swung gracefully from bar to bar, trusting his arms and body to keep him safe. He had confidence in his strength, even with the weighted pack on his back.

Dagger hesitated only for a moment before she jumped up and grabbed the bar. She started the climb, her form was jerky and less sure.

She was sweating through her gloves and it was making her hands slip on the smooth metal bars. She was using brute strength alone to keep a hold of the smooth metal bars.

In her peripheral vision she saw Echo drop to the ground on the other side, he finished the course. She was near the top of the pyramid when she felt her hands slip beyond recovery. Dagger blindly reached for the next bar, it was too far away, she couldn't reach it in time.

All she had time to do was to quickly look to her partner and let out a clipped call, full of panic and worry, "ECHO!"