Flame's commander graduates. The next guy, promoted in from Salamander, doesn't get along with Brighteyes and trades him away for a girl, making Flame the only army with more than one girl in it. Everyone seems to expect Aegis to have some particular interest in befriending this girl, but she's not even in the same toon or particularly interesting. Aegis's new toon leader (a promoted second from another toon, not her) doesn't know what to do with her, but he's bright enough to know that he doesn't know what to do with her. She retains her nominal toon second position, which means that she takes over if he gets frozen - not often; he prefers defensive maneuvers - and otherwise she dances around alone, achieving higher level Flame goals as a one-girl formation-wrecker. She's good enough at this to sometimes lead opposing armies to decline to use formations at all when they're battling Flame, and then she's a sharpshooter, hiding herself behind human shields and holding her beam on everyone who gets in her sights.

Eventually command changes again. The new guy makes a lot of trades, but keeps Aegis, and makes her a toon leader at last when she's nine and a half. It takes this long for Brighteyes to make good on his promise to try to trade for Aegis, but the new commander knows what she's worth and won't part with her for any price he offers.

Aegis watches Sue in the rosters. He gets an army when he's just barely eleven: Phoenix. He makes a lot of trades too, but not for her. That's okay. She's got a toon, and she teaches them to throw her where she needs to go, to make formations that will stand up to all kinds of busting moves like the ones she knows, to freeze their elbows if they can't hold their arms steady like she can to shoot straight.

Everyone's rapidly terrified at Phoenix's hivemindy mutie kuso.