"Come on, brother. Today is not the day." Corporal Michael Barrick was half-right, Lieutenant Minh Young Kim often reflected. It was on a day that looked like night, when the blood of Private Alicia Valera was still wet on the concrete and her cog tags still warm in Minh's pocket.
The city of Ilima had fallen to nemacysts, ink, and kryll. Buildings burned and crumbled. Many lives had been saved, but many more were lost. Minh suspected the Locust were using the city to get closer to Jacinto, and probably wouldn't occupy it for long. In months, he had thought, it would be just another Stranded ruin.
With Barrick's words weak under the roar of the kryllstorm, the burning rubble, and the so-close-yet-so-far-away King Raven evacuation helicopter, Minh stood at the edge of a precipice.
He stood in the shadow of General RAAM, possibly the most dangerous Locust alive… But the general was hobbled, nearly trapped in the wreckage of his own crashed reaver and battle-weary. The fight for Ilima had gone on for nearly four hours, and RAAM had already taken more than enough ammunition to kill a brumak.
"No," Minh said. "Today is the day. We might not get another opportunity like this. Turn around, soldier. Leave this one to–" A blast of kryll cut him off as RAAM directed a column of the tiny birdlike creatures between the two gears. Minh pushed Barrick forward, knocking him out of the way, and then lay flat on the ground as swell of bird-like razors passed. How RAAM controlled these tiny light-sensitive creatures was a mystery, but they made up the backbone of his strength.
"Sir!" Barrick barked, glancing around the rumble below for his fallen cigar. "This is a suicide mission! Our evac is about to get the fuck out of here without us!"
Minh looked at him with his stern narrow eyes. "Then get the fuck out of here, soldier. That's an order. Leave RAAM to me. If I die here, it'll be worth the lives I save by taking this big bastard with me."
"Your funeral, Lieutenant," Barrick growled, standing. "I can't just leave–"
"You can, and you will, soldier," Minh ordered coldly. "Save yourself. Take care of the boy."
Barrick's grizzled face contorted. He didn't look right without the cigar. He turned and reluctantly ran back towards to the orphanage's evac point where Jace and the rest of Zeta Squad waited.
This whole time, Minh suddenly noticed, RAAM had just been standing there, watching, his stark white eyes bright and beady on his hairless, stony face. His armor was tattered, which meant something, since although it looked like leather it could block the brunt of automatic fire and even a lancer's chainsaw bayonet. Valera had learned that the hard way, and paid for it with her life. His white skin was stained with dark blood on his exposed hands and face, but he did not send the kryll again.
"What's wrong?" Minh taunted, stepping closer carefully with the stock of his Mk II lancer assault rifle at his shoulder. He kept a bead on those little white eyes. RAAM may have been nine, even ten, feet tall, but even he couldn't survive a full clip to his unarmored face at close range. "Too tired to send your kryll? Too wounded?"
RAAM hissed. His voice was a deep, slithering rasp, the kind of sound that sends chills up necks and down spines. "Weak," was the word he used, stretching the syllable into several long, painful seconds.
"Am I?" Minh asked, smirking crudely. "You're the weak one. The general of the dirt people. You probably earned your title by simply being the tallest drone, or theron, or whatever you think you are, grub." RAAM growled, and Minh took his chance and pulled the trigger, but with a swipe of his arm, RAAM sent a quick arc of kryll down from the swirling black vortex above into Minh, shaking his aim.
A second wave knocked Minh's lancer to the ground and split his armor at the chest. "Weak human," RAAM breathed, pulling his foot free from the debris and guts of his fallen reaver. Minh stumbled to the ground, wondering why in Ephyra the kryll hadn't torn him apart. RAAM approached him, stopping less than a foot away.
Minh's face twisted as tiny cuts formed on his arms and chest through the holes in his metallic blue armor. At last, the blast of tiny sharp wings subsided, and Minh gazed up at RAAM's infinitely imposing figure. For a second, the COG didn't exist. Valera had never existed, and neither did anger or any emotions beyond awe and fear. All the lieutenant could imagine was a booted foot so big it could–and likely might–crush his torso, feeling no resistance. The weight of the world coming down on him…
"Rise."
Minh's narrow eyes opened under his creased brow. RAAM was gazing down at him, his eyes frozen in that silent expression that looked far too intelligent for a grub, and his big jaw implying an imposing underbite. "Rise," he rasped again, showing his dagger-like theron teeth as he made the order. Minh almost felt like he was being addressed by a superior officer, but that wasn't right… it was just his fear. It had to be.
Struggling and bloody, Minh abided, rising first to one knee, then to his feet, coming up to just below the powerful general's chest. RAAM produced his blade in one hand, the same blade that had tasted the carmine blood of Val and dozens of other Gears that day. Minh tensed but couldn't run. His legs wouldn't move. This was it. He had failed, and now he would die in vain.
RAAM drew his arm back and swung. Instead of sharp metal, Minh felt rough fist and sandpapery armor. RAAM's heavy knuckles knocked the gear to the ground again. Downed, but not out. Minh caught himself on his hands and knees, facing away from the mighty theron with a vermillion arc pouring from his busted bottom lip.
"Y-you planning some grand execution?" Minh choked, spitting out a canine tooth. "Why don't you just kill me?"
"Punish."
Then the kryll hit. Minh preferred it this way. He'd rather be eviscerated and die instantly than be mortally wounded and left to bleed out. But… again, the kryll did not bite the way they usually did. He felt his armor tear, and his skin split, but only slightly. His standard issue cog armor was taking more damage than he was. That very day he'd seen soldiers in full gear left minced in seconds by these very kryll, like humans in a blender. He felt the skin on his back itch. His armor was giving.
"What are you doing, you fucking grub?" Minh screamed, coughing up more blood and clearing his mouth to speak more easily. "Just get it over with!" He rolled onto his back, staring up at those curious limpid eyes. RAAM lifted his blade and buried the tip into the concrete street and leaned over Minh. He took the human roughly by the shoulders in his mighty, claw-tipped hands and held him at nearly eye level.
The lieutenant grimaced, terrified and confused. Why didn't he listen to Barrick? He realized he couldn't hear the evac helicopter anymore… It must have slipped through the last segment of clear sky by now, and Barrick was probably lighting up a cigar with Jace, miles away from the kryllstorm.
RAAM's heavy lips parted, revealing grey, beastlike teeth. One thing that made him stand out from the other grubs, aside from his size, was the fact that he possessed very humanlike lips that could actually cover his entire maw. Many Locusts could barely speak because their lips were too thin to even slightly cover their fangs.
Minh's slanted eyes grew wider than ever before when RAAM's uncannily humanlike tongue slipped out from between his rows of teeth and the towering theron pressed his huge face against Minh's. The bald soldier was suddenly the victim of a wide array of overwhelming sensations he never wanted to experience and never thought he would have to.
The smell hit first; like death, halitosis, and rotten eggs. It tasted about the same. But the suction was even more unbearable. RAAM traded grub spit for human blood pumping from Minh's busted lip, sucking on the wound and his entire lip. Minh tried to scream, to struggle, but couldn't. The general and his encroaching affections were too strong. Minh hoped he would simply have his face eaten, but his ultimate fear was realized when he felt RAAM's long wet tongue invade his palette. His poor tongue took cover behind his remaining teeth, and he tried to bite down, but RAAM's thick oral organ wouldn't give.
Minh tried to scream as RAAM explored his mouth with his own, his narrow eyes wide with fear and absolute discomfort. The Locust's eyes had closed, finally, turning into tiny bumps on the colorless stony topography of his nose-less face.
Grubs stole resources and occasionally took prisoners, but they didn't do this, Minh thought; it's been that way since E-Day nearly ten years ago. Things like this just didn't happen. What was this atrocity? He lost his train of thought when the slimy, rockworm-like tongue going down his throat triggered his gag reflex and he almost choked on puke. RAAM pulled back and Minh felt the Locust tongue catch his uvula on its way out, followed quickly by a stream of wet, slimy vomit. It'd been a long day, and with no solid food, the wet bile burned on its way out.
"Mine," RAAM declared, breathing into Minh's face, holding him as he purged himself on the ground between them. Some splashed onto RAAM's brownish-black theron boots, but he didn't seem to take notice. The mighty grub lowered Minh to his feet long enough to slip a claw into one of the kryll-carved chinks in his armor. With a pull, Minh's chest and back armor split painfully and fell free, revealing his hard, muscular frame.
Minh realized how sweaty he was when the heat of the nearby fires hit his shiny yellowish complexion. "Oh, god…" he pleaded, his eyes wet with tears and possibly some of RAAM's pungent saliva. "Oh my god…" RAAM's mighty hands kept going. In more violent motion, he pulled Minh's heavy leg and waist armor down like a thick pair of jeans, letting it settle at his ankles.
"This is hell," he muttered, shaking. "I can't take this." If he could get away for just a second, he could reach his lancer and eat a few bullets from it. Better yet, his snub pistol was still in the loose armor at his feet. Why hadn't thought of that before? If only he could reach down and–
It was too late. RAAM lifted him into the air, leaving his legs to kick and his terrified genitals to dangle. RAAM's rough hands felt like granite on his flesh, and his fingernails were like actual nails. Minh wasn't sure of what was going on until he realized RAAM had lifted him above the hilt of the ground-impaling blade. "NO!" Minh screamed repeatedly, struggling and kicking against a grub far stronger than he and his muscular body was lowered atop the erect hilt.
"No! No! No, no, no, no! Dammit, RAAM, couldn't you just kill me like a normal grub?" Minh's testicles hit the butt of the hilt and rolled forward. The hard rod hit his taint and scraped slowly back, toward the center of Minh's behind. "Sssssssuffer," RAAM rasped, pressing down on Minh's shoulders as his kicking feet hit the ground.
Every Locust in all of Ilima must have heard that agonized scream. Berserkers–nearly blind, but in possession of acute hearing–could likely pinpoint the duo's location from as far away as the Hollow.
Blood poured down the blade to the rubble on the street below, under the symphony of the lieutenant's screams, profanities, and pleas.
"Yessss…"
The gargantuan theron lifted Minh Young Kim slightly, and pressed him down again, sliding the shaft up and down Minh's raw, bleeding orifice. He did not even want to consider his next bowel movement, if he were to even live that long. "Oh, god," he moaned in unparalleled agony. He used to wonder in morbid curiosity what it felt like to be on the receiving end of a lancer's revved chainsaw… now he envied those mercifully dead fuckers. "Ahhhaaaggghhhh!" he continued to scream.
His flaccid genitals flopped worthlessly as he rose and fell, limp and slightly bloody from the growing wounds below. His inner bowels shifted as the invading rod explored, like a corpser digging a grub tunnel–but in reverse. It struck something odd inside, and Minh's exposed genitals stirred slightly.
RAAM paused, noticing this intriguing effect. Minh's face heated up at the start of an involuntary erection… it must have been from something that damn sword hilt hit on the inside.
"Mine," RAAM hissed, and lifted Minh mercifully from the bloodstained weapon, dropped him onto the ground. Holding him still, the Locust spread the human's legs and prodded his exposed –and oddly curious –member. With two fingers that seemed unnaturally gentle for the behemoth theron, he gently stroked Minh's shaft. Minh could only lie there, naked, doing everything he could to dismiss the misplaced erection…
"Where is my warrior? My champion?" her voice was smooth, coming from every direction and permeating his ears. General RAAM remained silent, a theron of few words as usual. It didn't take long for the Locust Queen's telepathic connection to make her aware of his situation.
"General! Fraternizing with a human? What is this? What are you doing to that groundwalker? I… I don't know how to react to this…" Her voice trailed for a moment. She watched through RAAM's awareness as Minh lay there, weak, bloody, broken, and unexplainably lustful.
RAAM rasped, "Punisshhh…"
His queen was silent for a moment. "I cannot say that I approve of this, General. You have been very… unruly, shall we say." Even slightly shaken, she remained eloquent. "But Ilima is ours, and if this is how you choose to celebrate, then I shall look the other away, this time. We have lost some irreplaceable resources today, with the fall of your elite squad. It will be difficult training and preparing further warriors of their caliber…"
Minh cried out as RAAM applied pressure to his thigh, adjusting his crouched position to better assert the matter at hand.
The Locust Queen was silent once again.
Minh didn't know what to do. All he could think of was reaching for one of his weapons and eating the bad end of it. He just… couldn't control his body. He was numb to any sense of pleasure that may be developing down there, but had no way of stopping his physical reaction. At one point, he nearly passed out as those strange, rough alien hands manhandled his little soldier.
Eventually, the general must have grown tired of this particular biological toy, because he let go of Minh's man meat and let it fall into its nest of dark pubic hair, red and tender. RAAM stood up to his full height again and, to Minh's surprise, turned away.
This was Minh's chance, he knew, lying there naked and violated. RAAM stepped over the discarded armor and Minh slowly tried to stand. His entire lower body was in agony, but he was a soldier. He'd taken pain before. With his thin eyes locked onto the toupee-like black section on the back of RAAM's head, he slowly started crawling towards his crumpled armor and the merciful snub pistol inside.
Suddenly, RAAM bent over. Watching intently, Minh saw the glint of metal through the dress-like theron armor flaps hanging like a loincloth between the general's legs. No… RAAM turned around brandishing the bald man's abandoned lancer.
"No…" Minh said, trying to turn around to crawl away. "What are you gonna…" Maybe he'll just kill me, he thought, as RAAM took him in his free hand and lifted him off the ground. Minh couldn't even kick this time. He didn't have it in him. The ground came into view, and then Minh ate dirt as he hit the dusty ground. He felt a big hand take him by the waist, and lift his buttocks into the air.
No… Locust pillage, but don't rape… Locusts don't rape. This is unheard of… Impossible, he thought weakly.
He heard the chainsaw rev and his heart almost stopped in his chest. Thankfully, the buzz slowed as the mechanism slowed to a halt. Then something hit the floor… the ammo pack. It was a sound Minh and any other gear or scavenging drone was used to.
Even the horrors he'd just suffered could not prepare the bald lieutenant for what happened next. Something cold and metal pressed against his throbbing rectum. It was smoother than the sword hilt, but still very, very painful. Minh's eyes watered as he expected to feel the bite of those carbide-tipped teeth at any second. Even if not revved, the lancer's teeth could easily cut through human flesh.
As soon as the weapon penetrated his sensitive orifice, lubricated by his still dripping blood, he heard a painfully familiar click–and the chainsaw revved. Now Minh expected to be torn apart, but instead his entire body shifted under the vibration… It was the stock of the gun advancing upon his intestines, not the barrel or blade, and the vibrations of the revving chainsaw sent his unwary innards and loins into a confused tempest of conflicting feelings.
Predictably, Minh screamed. He screamed as tears ran down his bloody face and fresh gore vibrated down his testicles and inner thighs as his reluctant body shook. Again, to his horror, his once-flaccid penis was saluting this sodomy, utterly defiant to him until the end, even as droplets of blood rolled down his drooping ball sack. RAAM made a sound like laughter, twisting the vibrating lancer to intensify the effects.
Minh's face hit the dirty concrete as his body gave in, a slave to the assault rifle lodged in his rectum. His world was crashing down as he fought with what was left of his pride against the errant boner raging below. Please don't notice, you horrible gay grub…
"Impressive," the Queen intoned regally, her voice vibrating in her servant's mind just like the weapon in his victim's body. "You are truly the cleverest of the theron, and even engaged in this… debauchery, you present that fact." She laughed gently as RAAM continued to make the humiliated groundwalker moan. He lay there nude in his blood and his filth, shaking uncontrollably like the foul animal he was.
"Yes, yes… Now I'm beginning to understand. You have one hour. I'll have a reaver standing by. Good work, General. Carry on."
Groaning in pain, Minh Young Kim lay there, twitching as the general probed further and further with the butt of his own weapon. Unfocused, he tried to crawl forward and escape the theron besieging his bowel, but it was hopeless. He lurched forward, falling flat on the ground and dislodging the revving weapon from his buttocks. He heard it clatter to the ground as the variable-torque motor fell silent.
Minh lay there for a moment, his body still quivering and uncomfortably numb from the uncontrolled vibrations. As feeling returned, it brought with it only pain and the humiliating feeling of an unwanted hard-on. He wanted death more than anything, but had almost given up on that. He was ready to just lie here motionlessly amongst the burning buildings and hopefully catch fire or be crushed by some collapsing structure. He had a bad feeling that RAAM wasn't about to just leave him to his fate, however.
He heard a new sound behind him, like something small and metal clinking together… a chain? A belt? …Straps? He forced his head to the side to see RAAM unfastening his theron armor from the front, undoing a long row of belts. The brownish black armor hit the floor in pieces, as the theron general revealed his intimating rocky frame. Like the common shirtless drone, he looked like a man made of mountain. A rough statue of porous white stone, almost calcified. If Locus hide were just a bit stronger, it'd be just like an exoskeleton. For corpsers, it already was.
In a silent moment of horror, Minh wondered why so many different Locust-tamed creatures had skin with that same rocky texture… He already knew they bred Hollow-dwelling creatures like wretches, seeders, and corpsers… but did they also breed with those monsters?
The lower half of RAAM's armor resembled a heavy leather kilt, and it hit the ground with a heavy thud, as if the dress-like portion of his armor weighed as much as a soldier's full gear. RAAM's last layer of clothing was similar to the tiny "underwear" wretches and bloodmounts wore, but the mighty bulge within made the thick material seem close to bursting as its seams.
Minh started crying again.
"Sssserve meeee," General RAAM ordered, and the vortex of kryll around them intensified. Minh watched with a face of absolute horror as RAAM aimed his finger of doom in the direction of the bald soldier's hindquarters.
Why would he strip down if he was just going to tear me apart with kryll? Minh wondered, then he remembered the less-than-lethal kryll that had held him down and helped strip off his armor. RAAM could somehow make them retract the blades from their wings or something. Minh bit his already bloody bottom lip and closed his eyes tightly, bracing himself.
With a collective screech like thousands of bats, a swirling whirlwind of kryll spun down from the inked-out sky and touched down at the apex of Minh's unguarded anus. He unleashed another howl that would have stirred all of the Berserkers under Sera as his insides caught on fire. Dozens of tiny creatures swirled about in his intestines, their blades suppressed. Instead of carving him open like swallowed razorblades, they tickled and pressed and pushed and nudged in every meaty place they could find. Minh felt like his belly was full of miniature corpsers and serapedes, touching his insides with their insectile feelers.
He threw up again, heaving violently. As his body contracted, he felt something fall out of his backside… weather it was feces, a septic kryll, or his large intestine, he couldn't tell. The kryll had reached his stomach now. He felt them moving about inside and was afraid he would see them if he looked down, like a fetus kicking through its mother's womb.
Seizing and pregnant with kryll, covered in every human substance he knew the name of, Minh could hear RAAM laughing at his humiliation. The theron stood above him, nearly naked, grinning with his monstrous teeth and those almost human lips. The two nostril holes that made up his nose flared, and his beady eyes narrowed just slightly.
He hooked his thumb into the waist of his brown leathery undergarment, and freed it, exposing his stony-skinned buttocks to the burning world and his inhuman member to a poor, helpless COG soldier. Minh gawked stupidly as it unfurled like a petrified rockworm. It was comparable in size to a human arm, from elbow to fingertip. The impossible rod was textured similarly to the segments of a corpser leg, but the tip was barbed like the elbow or shoulder joint of a kantus. This was a penis that could tame a berserker, Minh thought in horror. RAAM must have been prime breeding stock for the Locust Horde. Hairless like all Locust, the general's rough granite-like balls hung close to the size of human skulls, like a dread pendulum within the grandfather clock that made up his lower body.
"Go," he bellowed, and many of the deadly kryll in Minh's body burst from his anus in a blood-streaming torrent. They took back to the skies as if they hadn't just been birthed from the rectum of a suffering male human. Many kryll remained, however. He could feel them doing circles and twists in his large intestine. He puked yet again at the mere thought.
RAAM's knees thudded hard on the rubble and his masculine clawed hands took claim of Minh's rump. He pulled the crying lieutenant forward, meeting his anus halfway with the barbed tip of his kantus dick. Minh screamed as it plunged inside, pushing the remaining kryll further in and exciting them. He felt like he'd been stabbed from behind, impaled on the sword still stuck in the concrete nearby. He wished it were that simple…
RAAM pulled back, dragging the barbs of phallus through Minh's traumatized rectum, and plunged forward again, harder, deeper, faster. Minh screamed again as his organs lurched around inside him. A bump formed on his belly with every thrust, as RAAM's powerful member impaled and almost bifurcated him simultaneously.
"Yessssss!" RAAM rasped, quickening his thrusts. Minh couldn't feel the base of RAAM's equipment yet, which mean, terrifying, the theron's entire penis wasn't even inside of him. But he did feel those titanic skull-like testicles slapping against his nuts, nearly crushing them. The awful part was that he still bore a defiant erection, wet at the tip, beneath all of this.
Minh tried to block it out, to save his mind from his body's trauma, but it was no use. No thought was strong enough to blot out the situation. He tried to think of thrashball, the COG's official sport before E-day, but then the giant Locust behind him became the thrashball world champion, the Cole Train. Imagining the buff, dark-skinned Augustus "Cole Train" Cole, world champ turned COG gear, driving a phallic train up his rectum screaming his signature "Whoo!" was just as terrible as RAAM's reality.
As the duo moaned in opposite physical spectrums, RAAM's unsheathed cock-fury struck a chord in Minh, and his errant dong freed a milky-white substance in spurts onto the ground in front of him, adding to the embarrassment. RAAM rasped again, as if this reluctant release was the cue he'd been waiting for, and pumped harder, bringing it full circle.
Minh screamed in agony as the kryll inside of him panicked and RAAM's ungodly ejaculation struck Minh's bowel with the force of a point-blank sawed-off shotgun. Then it struck again and again with each prolonged spurt as Minh's intestines bloated up with gallons of warm theron funk. Now it was General RAAM's turn to howl. His orgasmic cry was like the paralyzing shriek of a kantus with the booming volume of a brumak. If Minh's screams had attracted any berserkers to Ilima, then RAAM's unholy intonation sent them racing blindly in the opposite direction.
Minh's ears rang… his bleeding body ached… he could feel his insides slipping out… the world spun around him, all blazing buildings, kryll, and RAAM's cragged beefy body. Finally, if not due to blood-loss than due to trauma, it was time for the lieutenant to pass out.
Lieutenant Minh Young Kim awoke too soon. His eyes adjusted to the blackened skies contrasted with the distant fires. He felt rubble and moisture beneath him. He must have been leaning against the remainder of a building. A new scent hit as his eyes began to focus…
The pungent odor of cigar smoke. Barrick?
His eyes focused on the smoke and the face beside his… and he screamed as General RAAM casually puffed on his scavenged cigar, breathing playfully into Minh's face. "Get away from me!" Minh screamed, trying to stand, but the heavy arm draped over his shoulder made him immobile.
"Miiiinnnnnne," RAAM hissed, laughing again and running his clawed hand along Minh's bare arm. He puffed on the cigar again, burning it down to the width of his finger. He tossed it aside and stood up, finally. The tip of his barbed, dangling shaft hung at eyelevel to Minh, and the lieutenant almost fainted again. The theron general reclaimed his armor calmly, dressing in front of Minh without modesty or shame. For a moment, Minh considered trying to reload his lancer and strike now, but he doubted he could move fast enough for a decisive hit and feared goading the general into another session.
Once dressed, General RAAM leaned down towards Minh's paralyzed form and reached out with a sandpapery hand to caress Minh's shiny head.
"Mine," he decreed, before releasing Minh from his thick fingers, then turned and strode out into the kryllstorm, proudly and shamelessly.
Minh could only lie there, trying not to think of what had transpired. Eventually, he recovered enough to stand, leaving a sloppy pile of blood, semen, and disoriented kryll.
Checking his discarded armor, he retrieved his standard-issue snub pistol and looked at the ammo. It was still loaded. A full clip didn't mean anything. He only needed one shot. With tears in his eyes yet again, he gripped the gun in one hand and brought it slowly to his temple. His face creased, his jaw clenched… He held his breath…
Minh lowered the pistol. After all of that, he didn't have it in him to go through with it.
He painstakingly put on the lower portion of his armor, being as kind as possible to his tender loin area, and holstered his pistol on the back of his belt. Claiming his lancer, he slowly limped out into the ink-induced darkness.
It would be fine if the kryll tore him apart, he decided. That way, he wouldn't have to pull the trigger. He half-expected the remaining kryll in his body to burst out and finish him off at any time. He still felt them inside, tracing his ravaged intestines like pieces of meat being stirred into steamed noodles. What nauseating torment. He crossed the threshold out of the fire's light and into the ink-induced darkness. The ambient shrieks of the kryll surprisingly didn't heighten… Minh continued limping, but the kryll didn't take the bait. In the air, a swirling swarm of them passed by, but didn't strike.
Minh's face heated up as he realized RAAM must have been behind this. Either the twisted theron had ordered the kryll to offer him safe passage, or this soldier had enough of the general's stank on him to stave off the little bladed monsters. From the orphanage, the lone lieutenant got his bearings and started slowly making his way out of town.
His earpiece, the only connection to Control and the rest of the COG, was useless with so much ink in the air. It didn't matter before, he thought, but then he realized the seeders had done nothing since but further shit up the skies. He left the link open, in case a signal slipped through, and paused beside a fallen soldier.
The azure-armored hero had taken a round to the head, splitting his helmet. Minh had never appreciated the regulation helmets, which was why he never enforced them upon his squads. It made recognition at a distance difficult and killed peripheral vision. The filtration system and light protection were not an even trade-off. Claiming the soldier's cog tag, he carefully reclaimed the nearly undamaged armor to replace his own. Scavenging wasn't something he was proud of–It made him think of the Stranded–but this time he had no choice.
With his comm-link open, he made a slow stride towards the edge of Ilima, the rest of the Ephyran plateau, and eventually Jacinto… or at least radio range. It would be an awkward ride back, he noted, if he made contact and they deemed him worth picking up. Commander Walker at CIC would surely have some questions for him in regards to his survival and his… peculiar condition.
She'd have to accept that Lieutenant Minh Young Kim would never, ever speak of this day.