A Boom in TimePrivate Hiroshi was
not having a good day.
Being stuck on shitass duty with Sergeant Stick-Up-The-Ass screaming into his ear at every minor infraction was hell on earth. That, and driving for the last 16 hours through dusty territory without so much as a toilet break. Even with the stim pills it was nearly unbearable.
He chewed on the end of his last cigarette, the only thing keeping him sane on this joyride. When it ran out he swore he was going to brake the hell out and shoot the poxy bastard with the multiple stripes on his shoulders, court martial or no. There was only so much abuse a man could take.
Mentally plotting his revenge was a good distraction. He was halfway through method 412 involving a joystick and a piano string when the whole world shook around him.
"The fuck was that!" His forehead was bleeding where it had impacted against the steering, the shockwave of the explosions behind them having catapulted him, seatbelt and all, towards the windshield.
The bright side of this: Sergeant Needs-A-Life was no longer next to him. More to the point, that grouchy old fart would never be able to scream into his ear ever again. The old bastard hadn't worn a seatbelt, and a man-sized hole in the windshield said volumes.
The bad: they were under attack. And he'd lost his last cig. FUCK.
"I didn't sign up for this shit!" He swore voluminously about the weather, the enemy, their ancestors, their probable descendants, and their body parts (or lack thereof). He was halfway through a tirade involving indescribable acts involving sheep, weird positions and lack of parental consent as he stepped out of the truck, gun raised, when a high caliber round smashed his jaw and broke his neck in a single shot. The rest of him fell with a thump, eyes glassy as they reflected the murky skies above.
~*~*~
"Banzai!" Sae whooped as her shot downed yet another enemy soldier. Sayaka's plan, put together in all of 2 minutes of plotting and 10 minutes of preparation, was generally working.
Pitting 2 people against a convoy containing at least 30 to 40 enemy troops was bad odds, even with explosives. Two snipers, on the other hand, had a better chance in the opening shots as they picked off key targets, sowed chaos, and evened the odds in their favor.
In the 30 seconds following the first explosion that upended the final truck in the convoy and collapsed part of the ridge, Sae had picked off 5 men, 2 of which were officers, and sent the rest scattering like rats escaping a fire. On Sayaka's end, the bashed in ruins of the first truck where her explosive round to its wheel had sent it careening into the brush was smoking ominously. Very few people made it out alive of that truck. Sae had no doubt that her partner was picking them off methodically. Like the way they used to hunt rabbits. Smoking them out was not cheating. It was called using your brains.
It took perhaps several minutes before the jackasses down in the killing hole realized what was going on, an interval during which Sae gleefully continued mowing people down with headshots whenever possible. Screams of 'sniper' finally sent everyone diving for cover, but Sayaka had planned for that as well. Sae grinned and hunkered down, hands over ears, when a flash of light from her partner's position gave the signal.
The C4 they buried around the road exploded, triggering a minor landslide. Dust spewed high into the air, the shockwave forcing some out of cover while a few unfortunates had limbs blown off due to their proximity to the blast zones.
Abandoning her rifle (but not before squeezing off another shot at the nearest visible target), Sae grabbed the assault cannons she had 'liberated' from her foes earlier. Its repeater action allowed it to fire up to 700 rounds per minute...and she had two of them.
Anyone who could have seen her maniacal grin would know to be afraid. To be
very afraid...
~*~*~
Sayaka was having a good day.
Despite all the unplanned interruptions and general mayhem, both her and Sae were alive and kicking. Kicking a lot of ass, actually. With all the screaming and explosions near the other end of the ridge, Sayaka assumed her partner was having fun. There was an incredibly loud bang and a flash that nearly blinded her.
Too much fun, she sighed and backhanded a soldier with her sword. He flew back and made a nice squishy wall art against the valley wall. Bloody entrails and all that. Very post modernist, if she could say so.
There was a pocket of calm as Sae presumably ran out of ammo. There was still shooting, but not the full automatic fire she had been hearing for the past 5 minutes or so. She dispatched another crawling, wounded soldier with ease, stepping over his corpse almost delicately as she worked her way through the battlefield.
The mixture of fog and dirt cut visibility down to a minimum. Muggy weather kept the debris hanging in the unmoving air longer than it should, which was irritating yet convenient at the same time. The eerie, ever present light of the aurorae added a strange lighting to the scene.
Sayaka couldn't recall ever seeing a real night sky. There were songs from the old days, years and years before she was ever born, about stars in the sky. A moon. True darkness of a real night.
All that was lost approximately a century ago, maybe less, maybe more. There was a storm. THE storm of the millenium. A solar storm of epic proportions. The geomagnetic corona storm that came as a result of that shorted out everything with a circuit and started a war. Ironic, you would think, since most military hardware was electronic. Alas, a good portion of the weaponry was shielded, and the paranoia from downed communications in the midst of a standoff between global powers was enough to precipitate World War 3.
In Sae's words, there were booms. Many big booms. Imagine a bunch of nuclear warheads that were supposed to be programmed to hit specific targets getting lost during their journeys due to the interference from the geomagnetic storm. The results weren't pretty. Everything shorted out when more nuclear booms went off in the atmosphere. Things went crazy. Satellite linkages were cut off. Communications went back to the days of the Pony Express. People continued killing each other. The works.
So now we have a permanently lighted sky, we never see the sun or the moon or anything else except for freaky strips of twisty lights that never really go out except during certain seasons, and even then it only gets dim, not dark. Sayaka wondered what it was like to have a proper day/night cycle. Time had become rather arbitary without nature dictating its flow.
Funny how she could ruminate about the world while in combat. Sayaka didn't even pause as she broke ribs with a solid kick and finished the poor bastard off with a blade through the throat. She had been keeping count, and that seemed to be the lot on her side.
The sounds of fighting had also died down on Sae's end, and the taller of the Twin Towers picked up the pace. Silence was ominous when it came to Sae. She trusted her partner with her life, just not Sae's ability to keep herself out of trouble. Call her a worrywart, but Sayaka was a worrywart with good reason. She had way too many accounts under her belt to leave anything to chance.
There was only one vehicle left standing...well, as far as being upright counts. There was a huge smoking hole on one side, gaping like an open invitation. The lenses in her helmet picked up residual radiation. So that explained the gigantic flashbang. It had to be overkill though, but then again it could be justified. The damn tank was still standing even after the rocket, giant hole notwithstanding.
It didn't take a genius to figure out where a certain Miyazawa Sae was. Sayaka advanced cautiously, ever alert to any sight or sound of an enemy. She couldn't afford to take chances.
The inside of the tank was dark, but surprisingly spacious. Sayaka could actually stand upright in there, surprising considering that the armor she was wearing added inches to her height and made her bulkier in general. After nearly tripping over 2 bodies a little ways from the entrance, her eyes adjusted to the lighting and caught sight of the outlines of a huge black cylinder. There was a big red button that practically screamed DO NOT PRESS on the cylinder. It was also obviously pressed. Sayaka almost facepalmed on the spot.
The evidence lay below the tank, where her best friend and partner was currently on her ass with a crazy naked chick on her lap. While Sae usually never objected to having girls throwing themselves at her, it tended to be an issue when said girl was very decidedly bent on choking the life out of her. Even with the helmet and armor. God knows how that worked, but Sae wasn't really in any mood to speculate. Need. To. Breathe. DAMNIT.
The Genking couldn't be more relieved when a familiar shadow loomed over them and Crazy Girl collapsed with a well placed karate chop to the back of her neck. Sayaka had to be going easy on the girl; there was no sound of breaking bone.
"...thanks..." Sae gasped, taking deep breaths. Sayaka shook her head.
"You were in armor, you could have kicked her off, you know."
"I dunno, she was kind of cute, I couldn't be mean to a girl like that. It's not right." Sae argued righteously. Of all the times for her misguided sense of chivalry to kick in. It was part of what made her so popular with girls, but
really.
"Besides, I have you." Sae piped up cheekily, grinning that audacious little grin as she took off her helmet to fan herself. "I knew you'd come in time, like you always do."
Sayaka sighed to herself, her irritation melting away. She just couldn't stay upset with Sae, not for long. Even if the girl was an idiot.
"So what are we gonna do with this?" Sayaka looked doubtfully down at the unconscious girl in Sae's lap. The Genking shrugged.
"Bring her with us."
Sayaka stared at her incredulously. "Are you mad? She tried to kill you."
Sae grinned. "I'm not dead, she's cute, and a little birdie over there seems to think she's important for some reason or another." She jabbed a thumb over her shoulder at an unmoving body sprawled deeper within the vehicle. The lab coat he was wearing posthumously identified him as a doctor or scientist of some sort.
"Besides, Yuu-chan will be happy if we brought back a souvenir for her!"
Sayaka planted her sword tip-first into the ground and leaned on it, holding her head with one hand. She could feel a headache building already.
"Aw come on! It's not so bad! I'll carry her!"
"And if she tries to kill you again?"
"You can always karate-chop her like just now."
"...says the gentleman."
"Hey, you're better at it than I am!"
Sayaka gave up. There was no winning this argument. She
would have the last word though.
"Just put something on her...and stop touching her ass. I
knew Yuko was a bad influence..."
"But it's such a nice ass!"
"Arrrrrggggg!"
Captain Akimoto, otsukaresama deshita.
===========================================
Love love LOVE the twin towers. If that wasn't obvious enough.
Will try to update quickly, but no promises!
Topic: Castleful of Dreams [5/01 - A Pleasure to Burn] (Read 11477 times)