"Rules."

Rules are important. At least, that's what he'd been raised to believe.

As Earth Combined Forces Volunteer Soldier Sergeant. WinterKnight sat on the blue squared couch set in the center of the room known as the officers lounge. Nestled on the tenth floor of Dexlabs Headquarters in Downtown with the rising suns rays warming his bare face thru the windows of the East facing wall, he let his sleep deprived mind debate the importance of rules in life. Or more specifically, the source of which the topic pertaining the importance and function of rules in the lives of the soldiers in the ECF came from.

Alone in the silence of early day with his thoughts as his only companion Sgt. Winter, as was his given nickname, could only hear one phrase as it kept needlessly repeating itself in his mind. "Why wasn't this done sooner?" With pen like stylus in his right hand and touch screen digital pad in the left Sgt. Winter simply stared with blank dead eyes at the nearly empty digital display of his inbox messages. Save for one short, crisp, three phrased, no nonsense message in bold print scrolled wide across the top. "A rule book needs to be made. Get on that. Now."

A glance at the ID tag of whom the clipped words came from showed the sender as non other than the Supreme Director of the Earths Combined Forces herself. Mandy. That short blonde haired little girl with the permanent scowl on her face that could peel steel off a tank with but a glance, and who also happened to be his superior commanding officer, was the one who sent him the message. A dozen questions had popped up in the young soldiers head the moment he first read the simple order.

"Why me? Why now? Why a book? Are others involved? What kind of rules?" Ending with the one that had been ricocheting around in his brain for a good three minutes. "Why wasn't this done sooner?" One would have thought that someone as efficient as Mandy, who single handily runs this massive organization day in and day out without so much as blinking an eye on her stoney face. Would have had something as simple as a rule book thought out, proof read, finalized, printed, and handed out at the very beginning of her term as Director.

But as the Sergeant pondered on this his slowly waking mind began to comprehend an obvious head smacking fact. This was the ECF. No ordinary book of simple rules could ever be applied to this jumbled up band of children, teens, adults, heroes, villains, thieves, idiots, celebrities, animals, monsters, figments, and all around crazy people, and be expected to be recognized or obeyed. At least not without some serious thought put into it. Even the most basic of rules would have to be very specific and flexibly termed to cover everything that could possibly come up.

Which in hindsight seemed like a very hard thing to do. Especially if you didn't have much time for it at the moment. Or didn't have the slightest clue as to how many kinds of complex natures you were going to encounter among the myriad of people you were going to be working with. As was probably the case the Sergeant suspected, remembering how he, Mandy, and the entire ECF had been assembled and pressed into action at break neck speed. Back in the not so distant but significant past of five years ago when the dreaded enemy of everything, "Fuse" , began its siege on the galaxy.

To combat such a monumental threat to their existence the leaders of Earth had quickly united and approved the creation of the Earths Combined Forces. An the organization that, upon its hasty creation, had hit the ground running. Within a week the heads of operations were chosen and those who were the most experienced in the ways of battle were picked to lead the fight on the field. Within the month the battle lines had been drawn, bases of operations had been established, and the first batch of volunteers had been recruited, trained, equipped, and sent out into a war that spanned the stars.

Never in the history of the Earth had such a force been assembled so quickly and efficiently. An it was well and good that it had, as Fuse wasted no time enacting his own agenda. For no sooner had the people of earth finished the final preparations for the coming conflict, than the enemy began raining down upon them like a green shaded apocalypse. Fuse had quite literally thrown everything he had at the little blue planet from his mobile leviathan mass of emerald death. The Fusion Fall, as the event is now referred to in the history books, marked the beginning of the war for the survival of the human race.

Looking back at it all its no wonder that something as trivial as rules of etiquette would have been forgotten. In the brutal blur of time that was the first five years of the war the only thing most people would have focused on would've been survival. Not rules and order. Much less proper and restricting rules of order. That narrowed mindset was cast into the abyss of rejection the moment it became clear that spur of the moment adaptation would be humanities greatest weapon.

With the cause of the somewhat late issued orders his child superior had given him now making the timing of his current assignment understandable, Sgt. Winter began focusing his now fully awakened mind on the task at hand. But despite having quelled his initial doubts about his orders, one new question quickly began to plague him. How best to go about this?

Making a broad yet simple set of rules wouldn't be enough as they could easily be bent or misinterpreted. An anything too complex or thought out would most likely be seen as too restricting and thus be ignored or challenged. An how would he be able to do it all by himself? He could not. That was the simple answer.

Winter was a soldier, a grunt, not a figure of authority. Sergeant he may be, but that didn't mean much in the ECF. One could easily be up for such a promotion in rank simply by surviving their first real battle without doing anything too stupid or suicidal. The rank of Sergeant was even available as a code name for heavens sake! The fact that the top ranking superior in charge of the largest army in the history of the human race even considered someone as unimportant as him for such a responsibility boggled Winters' mind.

But despite his steady mounting doubts about his ability to complete his given task, Winters knew one thing that could and has halted any thoughts of despair.

Never question The Supreme Director. She knows what she's doing.

Mandy may be young but she is the world genius when it comes to organizing people. She can read and figure any person out instantly from one meeting, and she never gave an order to anyone unless she was absolutely sure beyond any shadow of doubt that that person could handle the task she was giving them. It's why she was still in command of this motley crew despite the U.N.s efforts to dislodge her from her seat.

With that one universal truth settled in his mind Winter began to calm down. An as he continued to stare at the blank display of his Dexlabs standard issue data pad his train of thought began to wander onto the many other truths of the ECF he had acquainted himself with during his time among the people here. An suddenly, as if summoned by divine intervention, a light bulb as bright as the rising sun suddenly clicked in his head. With a quick swipe of his stylus holding hand the Sergeant opened up a word program on his pads display.

An began to write the first rule.