I don't own Xcom or Highschool of the Dead

Prologue

"Alright troops, time for briefing. We are to touch down in Tokonosu City, Japan. We are to immediately secure the largest civilian building in the area, Fujumi Academy. The high school is to be locked down, and panic is to be kept to a minimum. No one leaves. Understood?" The rest of the squad nodded. "Understand, Squaddie?" The squad leader posed this question at me.

"Yes sir." I replied meekly, not noticing that I had not followed the group. This worried me. I had heard that Midnight Squad was one of the toughest squads around, either them or Silver Squad, or maybe even Valkyrie Squad. They were regarded as the best of the best, only just below that of Crusader Teams. I was honored to have been chosen by this man. He was a strange one, to say the least. Everyone on the squad only referred to him as Dark.

That reminded me. Everyone had a codename, except of course for myself. It was a constant reminder of how I, just a lowly soldier, was paired with some of the greatest in the Xcom project. Dark, Barrel, Quickdraw, Courier, Cross, and then me. I was just Alice, Alice Garrick.

This was not the only way I was different, of course. I was just a plain boring American, with little heritage and history to my name. Everyone else was different.

Cross was Italian woman, straight out of Venice. She had graduated top of her class in med school. She was a legend, with rumors circulating that she had saved twice as many people as aliens she killed. Both of those numbers were easily in the triple digits.

Courier was a man of Native American descent. He never explicitly stated where he was from, or too much of his heritage. However he was regarded as the second fastest in the entirety of Xcom. Whether is was delivering messages under downed comms, or repairing downed comms, he was the fastest.

Quickdraw was somewhere from East Asia. He was often found meditating or practicing all manner of physical training. He went into battle with nothing but his trusty sword, a katana by the looks of it, and an enormous hand cannon. It was the highest caliber pistol the workshops could produce without making the recoil unbearable. He had slain a Muton in close combat and only just broken a sweat. But he was a man of few words.

Barrel was possibly the most enigmatic, besides their leader of course. He had his voice box and vocal cords damaged by a laser blast in one of the his early missions. As a result, no one even knew where he was from, much less who he was.

Dark, Dark was a whole different beast. He didn't even seem to be human. Most of the time he was cold and distant. He rarely offered warm words and helpful advice. Instead, all you received was "You could have done that better," followed by a lifeless stare. But the project had placed a lot of trust on him, allowing him access to the experimental armory. He had access to all manner of weaponry, from traditional guns to lasers, plasma based weapons, and who knew what else. But he almost never used them, preferring instead a simple rifle that all rookies were given.

Then there was me. I was to replace the squads sniper. She had died two missions ago from what I was told, strangled to death by a new alien breed. Snuck up right behind her while she was on overwatch and ripped the life right out of her. A shudder ran down my spine.

I knew most of the team resented me right on the back. They didn't exactly try to hide it. Glares and angry eyes were constantly watching over me. The only one who seemed to genuinely care about me was Courier. He took me under his wing the moment I stepped into the barracks.

It kept most of the jerks away, but Midnight and Silver still berated me for my lack of experience. But for some stupid, unknown reason, Dark had selected me among a host of other sniper candidates. I can only assume he wants me dead, for who knows what.

Quickdraw and Barrel seemed indifferent to me, from what I could tell. It was hard to gauge when they didn't talk.

The rest of the squad just shot me dirty looks or angry glares. Occasionally, I thought I saw a sly grin from Cross, but I could never be sure. I could just imagine a conversation of them detailing a report of my death. After recording all the wounds, a small chuckle from them would ensue. Then they would open my corpse bad, as they called it, one last time to attach the report.

"And what time to we touchdown, Squaddie?" Dark asked, ripping me from my deep thought.

"We touchdown...at...eleven fifty-nine sir?" I asked more than stated. My obvious lack of knowledge must have pervaded my words.

"No Squaddie, we touchdown at Midnight." He replied gruffly. "Gear up."

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ZenIaidoka