Hello There!

So, new story, and it's one that doesn't have anything to do with RWBY or WH40k for once? Is the World Ending? Or is all just a simulation that-

Bah, enough of that garbage! No, the world isn't ending, I've just been playing Battlefront 2 (2005) a bit more than is probably healthy, and came up with an idea for a story.

DISCLAIMER: Own this, I do not. Sue me, Disney Cannot.

Now, where were we? Oh, Yes...

It was dark on the inside of the LAAT gunship, with only a few distant rays of light breaking through the thick atmosphere of the world and breaching the slits in the gunship's doors. The distant roar of blazing artillery and AA-guns from below was only a dull rumble that merely served to remind them that they were still under fire. Every now and then, when gazing out through the clouds, he'd see a laser blast through the clouds, explosions and flak munitions detonated in the air, and occasionally see the burning wreck of an unlucky gunship plummet down towards the ground.

He'd be lying if he were to say he wasn't terrified.

It was their first mission, and a treacherous one at that. On paper it sounded so simple: Take the airfield, burn the enemy out of their southern bunker complex, and destroy their armored column. Such a simple order on paper, so tall in reality. The mission could nearly be described as a suicide mission, but with the shields up over the base, an orbital strike wasn't an option, so now their only option was to charge into the city with reckless abandon. The chances of just making it to the ground terrified him.

Still, he was excited all the same. Sure, the odds were just about suicidal, but if he and his squad were to succeed, the planet was as good as theirs, and he and his brothers would have one hell of a story to tell the others.

Whiskey squad was their designation, made up of himself, Axe, Aires, Bullet, and Jess. They were a tight unit, even if they were just, as Rex had dubbed them, "shinys". They were all some of the top of their class.

Himself, they just called him "Hell". It was a play on his designation, for the most part, but he didn't mind. He was armed with a DC-15S blaster rifle and grenades. Quick to crack a joke or screw around, it usually fell to Axe to keep him on task. Most in the squad considered him to be the fastest one among them.

CT-3462, or, "Axe", was a rather capable sharpshooter. Witty too, a very sharp lad. He was armed with a DC-15A blaster rifle. He was probably closest with Hell, more so than Aires or Jess, at least. Despite his apparent intellect, Axe was very calm in demeanor, and stern in action.

"Aires", or CT-2222, was armed the same as Hell was, and was similar to him in most ways aside from being, what most would call, a total ass. It was very clear he didn't like Hell or Bullet, mainly that being because they were such jokers and he probably just couldn't get it. Nevertheless, he showed himself a model soldier in training.

CT-1011 was called "Bullet", a name he gave himself referencing the name he gave his Z-6 Rotary Blaster Cannon. Unlike Hell, he usually didn't know when to shut up, but the only one that really bothered was Aires. Axe had long since given up on trying to reign Bullet's attention in, but that didn't mean he wasn't on whenever it counted. He was easily considered the strongest of the squad.

Then there was Jess. CT-9038. An expert with explosives, armed with an RPS-6 rocket launcher and a DC-17 blaster pistol. There wasn't much to say about him, the most notable thing being how... quiet, he always was. He didn't have much personality, and never spoke unless it was absolutely necessary.

"Thirty Seconds!" they heard the pilot yell over the intercom. There was a sixth guy in there with them, the sergeant. He signaled with his hand to ready up, so they all looked over their equipment. After determining he had everything he needed, Hell gave a thumbs up, and gripped the bar above him hard with his left hand. He looked around to see all his squad were much the same, and looked out the slits in the door to his right once more.

He wasn't sure if it was just bad luck, or the force hated him, but it was at that moment that a flak shell blasted their starboard wing and engine off, sending their gunship spiraling towards the ground. He grit his teeth under his helmet, before hearing the pilot yell something, though his voice was garbled through the intercom. Looking left and right, he saw his squad all brace their knees, and he did the same. At the last second, he heard his sergeant begin to speak, before being cut off by the crash.

"Whiskey Squad, brace for a hard!-"

Groggily picking himself up, he looked around for his squad, relieved to see them all rising to their feet. Barely a second later, he placed his hand down on the ground below him to steady himself as he rose up, only to find it wet. Barely any light shone through the dense clouds above him, but enough that he could make out what it was.

Blood, lots of it. He was partially laying in a pool of it, and it scared him. Flopping himself over, he was met with the unpleasant surprise of more thick, red liquid spurting over his visor. Scrambling back, he hastily wiped away the blood from his visor, incidentally smearing it all over his phase II helmet, and looked up at what had caused it.

It was the sergeant. He'd been the unlucky one, and was impaled upwards from his waist and up out of his shoulder, directly through his back and exiting out the center of his chest, and his head had been blown to bits from shrapnel. His corpse hung limply, suspended by the scrap metal from their crashed bird. Hell gulped, before looking away and rising to his feet and looking himself over. He was covered by the sergeant's blood, but didn't bother trying to remove it, as there was no point. He was in a position of relative safety with his squad, as the wreckage of their ship was providing good cover for them.

It was at that moment that he decided to take a look outside, and see what they were facing down. the scene before him could, he could've only describes as his namesake. Hell. Fire was everywhere, bodies strewn about, some dead, some dying. He watched as a clone barely managed to pull himself out of the wreckage of his gunship, before slumping down, dead. Upon closer inspection, he saw the clone had been split in two, and his intestines were trailing out behind him as he tried to crawl away, only to die shortly thereafter. Another clone nearby had tried to stop, drop, and roll to extinguish the flames that engulfed him, but ultimately found it futile as he burned to death. Another walked out of some wreckage, looking relatively unharmed, but seemed totally oblivious to what was around him, seemingly in shellshock. Hell called to him, and the clone snapped out of it, breaking out into a sprint towards him. He never made it, as some distant sniper reduced his head to mist in a single shot, leaving the corpse to slump forward, it's momentum leaving it to roll and slide along until it stopped just short of five feet from him.

Quickly retreating back into the gunship, he realized he didn't even have his weapon on him. Looking around, he found it lodged in the Sergeant's abdomen, soaked in the dead man's blood. Muttering a quick apology, he ripped his gun free from the body, and looked to his squad...

"C'mon." Axe said. He was soaked in blood too. "We still have our objective to complete." His words were followed by grim nods from everyone, and they all cracked their necks and knuckles before darting out the gunship, and charging on towards the enemy trenches.

Explosions roared around him from distant mortars, and machine gun fire zipped all around him, a few small slugs pinging off his armor. They'd never run so hard or fast in their lives, and all just barely managed to make the charge into the trenches, soon followed by dozens of other clones who'd managed to make the deadly charge. Jumping over the sandbags and barbed wire, Hell landed in a crouch in the trench, slamming his fist into a rebel's face, smashing the glass to bits. Acting as quickly as he could, he dropped to a knee, gripping the man by the throat and ramming his knife into the rebel's exposed face, splattering more blood on himself.

Standing upright once more, he sheathed his knife and brought up his DC-15A, before leveling it on a rebel not paying enough attention and pulled the trigger. The man was dropped to the floor within a second, a blast mark showing across his chest. Gritting his teeth, he snapped himself around as he heard someone behind him and came face to face with another rebel, who managed to push his gun down and punch him in the face. It rattled Hell a bit, but he could see that the rebel had seriously hurt his own hand in the process. Seizing the opportunity, Hell yanked out his knife and plunged the serrated blade into the man's abdomen, before headbutting him and sawing upwards with the serrated teeth of the blade, spurting blood once again all over himself and blurring his visor as the rebel screamed and coughed up blood over his face. With a loud, vicious growl he ripped the blade out and bashed the rebel in the chest with his shoulder, sending the dying man to the muddy ground. Not wanting to leave anything to chance, Hell flipped his grip on the knife, and dropped to a knee as he slammed the blade into the man's throat.

To his left and right, he watched as his squad brutalized the rebel warriors, tearing them up in just as bloody a fashion as he'd done to the ones he'd killed, if not far bloodier in Axe's case, who'd literally torn one man's jaw off and used that to kill one of his comrades, before slashing the former across the waist and using his spilling guts to strangle one of his friends. Hell wasn't perturbed this time. These men had killed many of his brethren this day, and now they were making them pay.

He huffed and puffed, before looking back at the field they'd charged across. A field of bodies. If he'd heard the term before from anyone else, he would've thought they were exaggerating, or that it was a metaphor... but here it was, he could scarcely see the ground between corpses, and the mounds in the earth he could clearly make out that it was bodies, not dirt. Some of his brethren were even using these mounds of bodies as cover. Rage and sorrow filled him, as he turned once more towards the direction of the enemy with renewed vigor and hatred. Hell swore he'd butcher a hundred of them for every ounce of blood he and his brothers had bled this day...

After two hours of fighting, they'd finally secured the trench line, and were put within prime striking distance of the airfield. Now, they merely had to hold the line and wait for reinforcements to arrive. Sighing, Hell linked up with the rest of his squad. They all had various injuries, but nothing stopping any of them from continuing to fight save for exhaustion. This battle was hard on all of them, and the victory was costly, but it had given them the beachhead they needed.

Hell was unsure, however, of how they could possibly take the airfield. If what command had said held any truth, this was the easy part. None of Whiskey was looking forward to the next part if that was true, but they knew they were as ready as they could possibly be. In the dugout they'd held up in, they all took off their helmets and looked each other in the eyes a few times. Axe was the first to speak.

"This battle was..."

"Let's not think on the battle, Axe... just gonna psyche us out for the next fight." Aires said, and Jess simply nodded, not saying a word.

"Those dirty bastards killed the sergeant, killed Echo, Bravo, Beta, Omega, Tango and Foxtrot squads, and killed hundreds more of our brothers! AAAARGH! WE'RE GONNA MAKE THOSE DIRTY SONS OF BITCHES PAY!" Bullet roared out in anger, before punching a support beam hard enough to make it snap in two, the two pieces just barely holding onto each other enough to keep some level of support. They could all see the belligerent clone had tears streaming down his face, and they knew they couldn't blame him for his outburst. They all felt the same way, they simply had enough control to refrain from saying it.

"What... what matters is that we've come out of this alive, and that we continue to come out of this alive. The longer we live, the more we can make these dirty whores pay with their lives." Hell declared, getting grim nods from all his teammates. Not a moment later, they all heard a loud bang from something hitting the wall behind them. Turning around they saw it was Captain Rex. Behind him there were three ARC Troopers, all bearing the colors of the 501st, and wearing kamas and double-sided pauldrons. Immediately, all of Whiskey snapped to attention, saluting the captain.

"At ease, men." Rex said, nodding as the troopers eased up. "Whiskey, It's a dangerous mission, but I want you and your squad to lend support to these ARC troopers when they storm the command center of the Airfield."

"Sir, you can count on us, Sir!" Hell answered for his squad, getting a small nod from the captain.

"This is ARC Trooper Fives." Rex said, gesturing to the clone in the middle of the three troopers behind him. "He will be leading the attack. Beside him are Troopers Jesse, and Mag. Follow their every command, and give 110% of your effort, and you just might survive. Now ready up. We're moving out in thirty minutes."

Hell smiled, relieved that they were finally fighting alongside ARC troopers. It seems his entire squad sympathized with that thought, as they all shared his grin. Rex had made his way out of the hole, and made his way off, presumably to join the rest of the attacking force. Looking at the ARC troopers more closely, they saw that the troopers had heavily customized their armor, and their armor also looked a tad... different.

"Well," the ARC trooper, Fives, spoke up first, "anyone got a deck of Pazaak cards to pass the time?"