Chapter 1: Never dig too high
The confusion has worn off, and most of the rubble was cleared a while ago. Never let it be sad that The Vaulters can't make the best of a bad situation.
"Carla! Grab your bolt gun, we're heading out!" Carla heard her superior shout from across the messy, yet still well-powered, floor.
'Heading out? Why in the name of Auriga are we heading outside in a situation like this?' Carla thought to herself as she made her way to the armory assuming she was in the middle of a siege, 'There's not much point in arguing with the captain, not when he's being this loud anyway.'
Carla's exploring equipment was mostly heavy plate armor that covered her almost entirely to minimize exposure to the heavy tundra that The Vaulters used to call home.
Now equipped with her armor, she reached to take the last bolt gun from the rack just as another hand came into view, swiftly taking the gun off the rack. The blue accents for the rack glowed to indicate that there is, in fact, no more guns available.
"Hey!" Carla turned to and shouted at the unresponsive gun thief as he proceeded to ignore her obvious dissatisfaction.
'Great, I'm stuck on overwatch.' Carla thought to herself annoyed to finally fall victim to the unwritten rule: No gun, no fighting. The Vaulters, despite loving any opportunity to enjoy the latest and greatest gadgets, didn't have many weapons laying around, not since the great quake as some of the noobs are calling it. So people that go out without a gun are responsible for watching everyone else's backs at all times.
"Hey mom, where do you think you're going," inquired Chef from behind.
Carla turned to face Chef as she remembered the inside joke of calling her mom and figured that Hot Bot had to be in the room too-
"Come on Chef, that joke's older than my grandma," Carla herd Hot Bot's attempt at humor, and instantly recognized his signature false confidence from her left.
'The poor guy tries so hard to be funny. Someone's gotta tell him how to really sell his lines. Probably, Chef, he's got a good score with this kinda thing' Carla through to herself as she internally cringed at yet another missed opportunity for Hot Bot to make her laugh. Hot Bot's comebacks were weak and that's not too bad, but as Carla theorized, he knew they were week half way through saying them, forcing him to shift his tone, making them painful to listen to as it reminded her of a time before she had learned how to smoothly convey her thoughts.
Now that he's next to Chef, it looked like a very stark contrast, with Hot Bot's head exposed to reveal a pale red head atop an unremarkable forehead, leading into a well-defined jaw line and pearly white teeth to match.
Hot Bot wasn't short by any means, in fact, he was the second tallest man in boot camp, but Chef was a hulk of a man, even for Military standards. He was so massive that sometimes, a superior would order him to kneel so he could be at eye level with them, and the heavy armor, much like Carla's own, didn't help. To make him seem even less approachable, he had a rumbling voice that would sometimes make the recruits feel like their soul was shaking. Although this voice did make him sound overpowering, his slow pronunciations combined with the deepness of his voice did make for, as he soon found out, great deadpan comedy, wich only created yet more contrast between the two.
Chef was no cook, but the one time in boot camp that he was allowed to hold, and only hold, an experimental flame thrower, he ended up frying up Josh's bunk. The rest of us recruits would joke about him always over heating his equipment overheating like his bed, and the next morning Jimmy, another recruit, would; grab a glass of water, disable his alarm clock, light a match, hold it up to his face, and when Josh woke up panicking at the fire, that Carla was sure looked a lot larger from up close, Jimmy would hand him the water, and pour it onto the match, and thus getting the bed soaked in water. She would top it off by saying "Nice going, Hot Shot". Well, she would, but she fumbled the line and instead ended up saying "Nice going, Hot Bot". Needless to say, as with most freudian slips, no one has let him live that down.
"Reporting to the main exit for briefing, how 'bout you," Carla responded feeling confident for being part of the Vaulters scouting party. Whenever something big happens they'll be the first to know, and they'll be the first to see it.
"First of all, there's nothing to brief. We're going out there so the real squads can have a briefing," Jimmy butted in.
Giving the room a quick once over to try and find him Carla noticed a figure by the armor rack where Jimmy's voice came from, heavily obstructed by the shade provided by a light malfunctioning, and his light armor. With his helmet on and how still he was standing, Carla miss took him for a lazily discarded armor set.
"Jimmy, if you're going to bring us all down by acting like scouts aren't at all important, why don't you take some of your own medicine and stop acting like Team Ghost, it makes you look childish," Carla spat back a little more aggressively than she meant to.
'I wish Chef was a little less patient so he would get involved. Whenever I talk back it just turns into a shouting match, Carla thought to herself as her memories caught up to her and she recalled the last time she got confrontational.
"You want to talk about me acting childish while name calling in the same sentence,-" Jimmy inquired before being interrupted by Hot Bot.
"Ya, those jokes are kinda, well, getting old. We do have real names for a reason after all," Hot Bot interrupted while again showing his paradoxical lack of both commitment and tact.
"Ya, in fact, they're older than his grandma. And that's, like, super old," Chef chimed in at a patronizingly slow pace.
'So that's our team dynamics, Jimmy brings us all down, I try not to let him get away with it, Hot Bot backs him up despite constantly telling me how he hates Jimmy's mean-spiritedness, and Chef just sits back and busts some britches when he can get away with it,' Carla thought to herself as she rolled her eyes and jumped when they landed on the captain as he stepped into the room.
"Line up soldiers, you've got a job to do," the captain shouted, not at all pleased with the bickering of his subordinates.
Everyone else turned around to look in Carla's blind spot, who also turned to see a gaping hole to the outside world wich happened to be a barren and empty field of hard soil and rocks. This must have been what Chef and Jimmy were trying to tell me before they kept getting interrupted.
The team was lined up parallel to the beach with Carla flanked by both Jimmy and Hot Bot who was himself flanked by Chef. On the captain's command, we would do our job as we did countless times before, but this time felt more special. Like today was the most important day to be a scout so far.
Carla wouldn't have to wait long to gauge the accuracy of her gut feeling as the captain gave the order, "Move.
