AN: Honestly, I have no clue what I'm doing at this point. I've got one-shots to write and rewrites to do, but here's another sloppy one day write. Why? Becuase I wanted to. Please leave a review or PM me if you have any ideas or thoughts about this story. By the way, this story will be following team RWBY later on, I just wanted the first chapter to be a little backstory I guess. Also honestly, I have no clue what to do with a story after the first chapter, so don't expect frequent updates for anything. If you have any ideas for how to progress any of my stories, I would be happy to consider them. Keep in mind, if you want to tell me an idea send it through a PM and not a review. It makes things a lot easier to track down in the long run. As always, there will be another AN at the end. Now enough with my rambling, here's the first chapter of IED. Hope you enjoy.
February 27th, 2000. 306 days left in rotation.
"What's the situation?" A woman with black hair that ran down to the end of her neck and ended in red tips asked a man with short black hair and a fair amount of stubble. He turned away from the terminal he was controlling the bomb disposal robot from to face her and explained.
"About 150 meters down the road there's an IED we found under a pile of rubbish and gravel. Whoever put it there seems to know we would be coming. From what I've seen, this thing could blow a crater 'bout 25 meters wide." He said as he pointed down the road towards the bomb.
"Well, what's the plan." The woman asked. The man smirked and looked at her again.
"Well, Summer, we're gonna blow it up!" He chuckled to himself for no particular reason before talking again. "We need to bring the bot back and give it a little wagon with some C4 and send it on its merry way." He turned back to the terminal and brought the bot back to the Humvee where they were controlling everything. Once he got the bot back, he got into the Humvee to set up the wagon. Summer stepped in and grabbed a box with a couple blocks of C4 inside. She grabbed 4 of them placed them in the wagon after the man had gotten it attached to the bot. She hooked it up to a remote detonator.
"Hey. You got it all set up?" The man asked.
"Good to go, Qrow." She gave him a thumbs up with a smile on her face. He smiled back at here.
"All right. here we go." Qrow started carefully moving the robot back to the IED's location before a crack rang through the air and Qrow's feed went dead. He cussed before looking up to the bot and seeing it had been shot.
"Everybody down! We got at least one enemy on my nine! Return fire!" Summer and Qrow fired in the direction the shot came from along with the other members of their EOD Squad.
"Movement on the closest building!" Summer locked her sights on the man she saw move and put a few bullets in his back. "Enemy down! Cease Fire!" A few more shots were fired off before they all stopped shooting and a few went to check out the building for more insurgents.
"Dammit! Summer, it looks like we're gonna to have to disarm this one by hand. That fucking White Fang member took out the bot." Qrow said as he walked over to the Humvee and pulled out a large bomb disposal suit. Summer walked over to him and put a hand on his shoulder.
"Relax. It's not like this is what I was trained to do or anything." She said with a sarcastic tone before she put the suit on with the help of Qrow.
"Doesn't mean I can't be mad about it. Every time you put this suit on it means you're putting yourself in danger, and you're the one with a kid back home. I don't want Ruby to grow up without a mama because she got herself blown up." He said as he put the helmet on over her head.
"I'll be fine Qrow, I promise." She said as she smiled again. Qrow always wondered how she could be so damn happy all the time, but it lifted his spirits up a little every time she was around to lighten the mood.
"All right. You're all set. Be safe out there. We'll keep watch." He said before he turned back to the building where the White Fang member was and saw his squad mate give a thumbs up. He radioed to them to watch for any other threats before watching himself.
Summer walked up to the IED slowly, making sure that there were no pressure plates or trip wires she would step on.
"25 meters." She said on the radio.
"Copy that. You are now in the kill zone." Qrow said in a monotone voice. Summer winced at his statement. She never liked calling it the 'kill' zone because it always felt too serious for her. She liked to call it the 'don't fuck up or you probably won't be able to make another fuck up' zone. It stuck with her at least; the others not so much.
She finally made it to the bomb, and she uncovered it more, seeing as the bot couldn't do much on its own. She looked at the front where a bunch of wires protruded. One, in particular, caught her attention; a long thick wire that seemed to lead somewhere.
"We got a wire here." She said through the radio. She started to follow the wire further down the road where it seemed to stop and branch out into even more wires. She grabbed the middle of them all and carefully pulled them up, revealing six more bombs that were all the same size. She was sweating now and her breathing was becoming ragged. "Holy shit… Tell everybody to get back, Qrow. They've got enough here to blow up the whole block."
"Everybody get back!" Qrow shouted. The other members of the team all moved back to a further position where they could still see Summer and her surroundings. One of them noticed a man watching her at a nearby marketplace that had been evacuated earlier.
"Hey, we got a gut sitting over there in the market at her six." Qrow took notice and brought his sights to the man.
"Hey!" Qrow shouted at the man to get his attention before he waved at him. The man took his hand out of his pocket and waved back with a small smile before he looked back at Summer and put his hand back in his pocket.
His pocket… Oh shit.
Qrow looked over at Summer and then back to the man who pulled a small object out of the pocket that Qrow had been eyeing. "He's got a phone! Summer, get out of there!"
"No, I got this." She said as she cut the third to last wire.
Qrow and the other members brought their sights back up to the man. "Drop the phone! We will shoot! Drop the phone, now!" The other men started shouting at the man along with Qrow. "We'll give you one more chance! DROP THE PHONE! SUMMER, MOVE IT!"
"I GOT IT!" She shouted back as she cut the second to last wire.
The man dialed something before Qrow shouted, "OPEN FIRE!" The man was shredded within a second and the phone dropped out of his hand and hit the ground. Unfortunately, gravity decided to hit the send button for him.
An explosion shook the ground, and the shock wave knocked Qrow down on his back and his ears rung. Looks like they didn't go back far enough. Summer wasn't kidding when she said it would blow up the block.
Wait, Summer!
Qrow instantly got back on his feet and ran into the recently destroyed city block.
"Oh shit. No, no, no. SUMMER!" He screamed her name into the falling rubble and dust. A few more members of his team found him and grabbed him by the shoulders.
"Qrow! She's dead, Qrow! You've got to get that wound patched up or you'll be joining her." Qrow looked down at his midriff and saw that it was soaked in blood from an extremely large cut that he got from what he assumed was a fragment of shrapnel. He shook his head in denial.
"No. She was just standing here. She was right here." He said as he yanked off the men's hands and started walking closer to the blast area. The others tried to drag him back, to no avail. The dust finally died down and Qrow looked down the road to where the bombs were to see nothing but a vast crater where Summer had stood just moments ago. He collapsed to his knees and started weeping into his palms before his squad mate grabbed him again and got him to walk to the Humvee in his distraught state.
Almost immediately when Qrow got back to the Humvee, a man with messy green hair and glasses ran up to him and started patching his wounds. Qrow was no longer in hysterics, but he seemed out of character. Like an empty shell of himself
"Hey. You're gonna be okay, Qrow. I got you. Don't worry." Qrow's vision was cloudy now and he couldn't honestly see who he was speaking to.
"That you Oobleck?" He asked with a slight slur in his voice.
"Yes, it's me. Now stay quiet and reserve your energy. You lost a lot of blood." He got done patching Qrow's wound, and he got the other soldiers to put him on a stretcher. "You're gonna have to go home for this one." Qrow nodded his head as his vision transitioned from blurred to blackness. The last thing he remembered before passing out was the heartbroken face of his now motherless niece.
"I'm sorry, Ruby… I'm so sorry."
AN: I'm gonna be honnest with myself, this is one of my shittier looking chapters when I read it over, but it's my favorite idea so far. If you've gotten this far, I hope that you enjoyed it. Please leave a PM or review, because both mean a lot to me. I will take any and all criticism, even if it's just pointless rambling about how terrible you found it or how bad the plot is. I WILL TAKE EVERYTHING INTO CONSIDERATION. Pour your heart into it and make it meaningful. Also, if any of you guys want to have a go at your own versions of any of my stories, just send me a PM and I will gladly let you use any of my ideas. I think that most of the ideas are really good, I just don't know what to do with them. Thank you guys and gals for reading. Have a great day!