AN: Well I'm pretty sure this won't cause much of a stir in the scheme of things, but I just had to continue this little piece. For the few people who might read this, enjoy the ride! Also, thanks a bunch to the last reviewers, Heliopolis, Stewman2k7, and FAT DUDE.
AVATAR NOT READY
Second,
"A change in plans."
NOD Recon Outpost 'Adel'
3:42pm
This remote NOD base had probably the least strategic value in the entire world. So it came as very little surprise that hardly any form of action took place on a daily basis. In fact, the base was so unimportant that communications with the main branches of NOD had long since been completely unused. They were just a bunch of guys that had totally fallen out of the loop of things. Aside from hardly having anything to fight, the men hadn't much else to call upon for entertainment. That was until their only Avatar Warmech came tripping into its hangar. They hadn't laughed like that for a while.
The hangar door slammed close behind the useless mech; somewhat muffling the barrage of laughter from outside. Bob and Stacy clambered out of the machine, glad to be on their own two feet.
"I hope that's the last recon we have to do with this thing." Bob grumbled; flipping the hood off his head to reveal his no-nonsense average brown hair.
"Embarassing." Stacy sighed with a slow shake of her head. Off across the widely vacant hangar, a young general who looked remarkably like former President Tom Cruise approached the disgruntled duo. When Bob spotted him coming closer, he had to struggle not to screw his face up in disgust. The general was actually the Base Commander, and in just three days of his being in charge he was already hated by everyone. He was Base Commander Arnold Kingsley, a skinny little whelp whose only skill was politics. In short, Kingsley was the worst kind of soldier; a pessimistic ladder-climber who had no real combat experience but still felt he was worthy enough to make everyone's routine more than a little unbearable.
The General walked briskly towards them; his stuck-up swagger reeking of unbelievable arrogance.
"Master Sergeant Bob and First Lieutenant Stacy." Kingsley greeted; his tone lazy and pompous. "I trust nothing outward occurred on your mission?"
Bob and Stacy saluted rigidly.
"Our mission was carried out without incident, sir. We spotted a GDI battallion headed north-west a few hours ago. They're probably long-gone by now." Bob reported slowly.
Kingsley just stared at Bob as he spoke; bored as usual.
"So, how did you find the Avatar Warmech? Is there anything you think should be changed?"
Bob shared a surprised look with Stacy. It was rare that Kingsley ever ask further on a matter that didn't concern him.
"Well…now that you ask…" Bob shrugged.
Kinglsey suddenly put his hand forward as a gesture that Bob not say another word.
"I'm sorry, Bob but you've mistaken me as someone who gives a shit." Kingsley smirked.
Bob narrowed his eyes angrily but stayed quiet. Stacy just fumed beside him.
"I want both of you sorry asses to write out a full report and have the Avatar fully repaired by tomorrow. Is that clear?"
Bob and Stacy saluted once again; almost bursting with the need to shut the little bastard up.
"That'll be all." Kingsley snapped, turned on his heel and walked away.
When Kingsley was out of earshot, Bob crossed his arms and muttered: "I'd like to see the Blackhand roast that son-of-a-bitch."
"Concur." Stacy approved.
After a long day of work, Bob and Stacy agreed that they deserved a day's rest. So the two headed off towards the nearby Hand Of Nod; traversing the base under the baking desert sun.
"Damn this heat." Bob grumbled and wiped his glistening forehead with his sleeve. "I can't wait to just relax and watch some TV."
Stacy was about to add to the conversation but something caught her eye from the mass of varied infanty they walked amongst. Her eyes widened in surprise and she nudged Bob sharply in the ribs.
"…Urk! Oh, what the hell are you-" Bob noticed her staring forwards apprehensively so he followed her gaze to see the source of the trouble.
Bob almost tripped in surprise. It was Gary. The self-proclaimed leader of the Avatar Fan Club. The sad thing was it wasn't a joke at all. He and a bunch of other Nod troops seriously thought the Avatar, and its pilots, were the heroes of Nod. And the worst part of it all, was that Gary was just a few metres in front of them. He was only a few seconds away from spotting the already embarassed duo.
"Crap…" Stacy hissed, looking around herself for a way out. Bob was frantic to do the same, but the crowd around them was incredibly thick. At one point, Bob tried to pry his way through a group of Rocket Soldiers only to be sent sprawling on his ass a moment later. Stacy was just as unsuccessful, and as the two found themselves thrown together again by the momentum of the crowd, Gary spotted them and instantly bolted towards them, knocking over a group of Shadow troops on his way.
Bob and Stacy groaned consecutively and made no effort to seem polite when Gary made his greetings.
"YO! Man, it's been ages since I last saw you two! I heard you took the Avatar out for another slice of mayhem?" Gary commented loudly, his ginger youthful tone in stark contrast to his huge armour clad self and the fact that his role in the war effort was to bathe enemy troops in searing flame. Gary himself was good-looking, albeit in an unoriginal sense, with his stern crew-cut brown hair and earnest blue eyes.
Bob sighed. "Yeah…it was actually pretty dissappointing, Gary."
Gary beamed, having not really heard him. "Oh, that's sounds awesome!" He then turned towards Stacy, who was staring at him with more than the usual amount of bored contempt. Gary noticably stiffened under her hard gaze and it reflected in his tone.
"Uhhh, hey, Stacy. You look…nice." Gary gave a big grin.
Stacy stared back, a little surprised at the compliment. She half-smiled and nodded politely.
"So…" He turned back to Bob. "What're you guys gonna do now?"
Bob rubbed one of his shoulders gingerly. "To tell you the truth, I'm sore as hell. I just wanna get out from under this heat, go back to my room in the barracks, turn the air-conditioning to max and relax in front of the TV. Mundane, I know, but I deserve a break."
Stacy flipped the hood off her head and smoothed out her short snow-blonde hair. One thing that stood out from Stacy most, was her apparent lack of interest in standing out at all, contradictory as it was. NOD lived in an age that had no room for sexual discrimination, so women were a regular part of General Infantry Units nowadays. Even so, Stacy had never actually been in real combat, and neither had Bob. They'd 'joined' NOD after running away from their dilapidated hometown solely for the reason that they had no other way to maintain themselves in the crappy planet known as Earth.
They simply had no other way to live at this point, and it was pure luck that the base they lived their lives in never saw any action. The two had been glad to have a peaceful, albeit unexiciting life together. Often, people would jump to the conclusion that Bob and Stacy shared a romantic relationship. Whenever this came into conversation with either of the two, they would laugh themselves stupid. Bob and Stacy had only one thing in common, and that was their cynical view of the world.
Gary flashed a huge grin. "Well if anyone deserves a good lie-down, it's you two."
Bob and Stacy shrugged nonchantly, not adding anything to the conversation, instead choosing to wait until Gary ran out of anything else to say.
"So…" Gary began, raising his armored hands into the sky. Two more soldiers appeared at his sides and did the same; bowing their heads low. They then twirled on the spot like ballerinas and finished with a big jump before landing on their knees and spreading their arms out wide. "We wish you all the best!!"
The duo simply shrank their shoulders inwards, embarassed beyond belief.
"And so…great heroes of NOD…!" Gary continued.
Bob stepped forward urgently. "No, please…!"
"WE SALUTE YOU!!!!" They screamed in high-pitched voices, shattering nearby windows.
Bob wanted to simply dissappear on the spot. Stacy must've felt the same way as the troops all around them broke into uproarious laughter.
X
"Ugh." Stacy grunted as she lifted herself onto the top bunk of the bed and immediately laid still; facing the wall. Bob shifted onto the bottom bunk and sat up against the adjacent wall, picking up the TV remote in the process and pressing the power button.
The pathetically small TV across the room flickered to life and revealed to be showing one of Bob's favourite shows; the ones that put him to sleep the quickest. Bob hit the mute button on the remote and instantly felt his eyelids growing heavy as the NOD propaganda channel droned on; showing Kane pointing at the camera as big red words appeared beneath him that read 'Uncle Kane wants YOU!'.
Bob sighed as the familiar feeling of sleep slowly wrapped him in its warm merciful embrace.
Then-
!!! BROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP!!!!
Bob's eyes shot open in an instant. He didn't recognize the sound blaring out of the wall-mounted speakers, but he gathered that it was something he thought he'd never hear.
"ALARM!!" Someone from outside his dorm screamed, followed by more muffled panicked shouts and droning thunder of countless feet.
Bob finally came to his senses and he quickly stood up from his bed before a force from above drove him into the floor.
"Argh!!" Bob yelled in pain.
Stacy had leapt off her bed in alarm and had landed squarely on Bob's back. When she noticed how the floor was writhing in pain, she looked down to see herself standing atop her friend sprawled on the floor.
Stacy covered her mouth in shock and quickly leapt off Bob's back and helped him to his feet.
Bob groaned and glared at her coldly. She bowed her head sheepishly.
"Sorry." She murmered quietly.
Bob was about to make a snappy reply when he remembered what the cause of the trouble was. His eyes widened and the pain in his back was temporarily forgotten.
"Y'know, Stace, that sound that I'm hearing is quite alarming." Bob joked.
"Lame." She muttered with a wry smile, before her face darkened grimly.
"I think we better gear up."
A few minutes later, the two had donned their uniforms once again with their crappy MG96 rifles in hand, racing down the wide corridor of the barracks that lead back out into the base grounds; hundreds of other varied infantry running at their every side.
Soon, like a torrential waterfall, they blasted out of the main doors out into the orange dawn; their weapons raised in the air and a steady storm of anti-GDI chatter raving everywhere.
Bob and Stacy were quiet. This is NOT what they had wanted. And the thing they most feared was heard before it was seen. A thunderclap of numerous explosions roared over at some distant part of the base. Gunfire of many calibers erupted shortly after, followed by the unmistakable sounds of GDI artillery and armor.
"This is IT! We will fight for NOD!!"
"YYYEAAAAAAAH!!!"
"Make them SUFFER!!"
They were sure fired up for a battle they could never possibly win, Bob mused darkly. Not only had GDI caught them by surprise, but he'd lived long enough in the base to know that it was never meant to stand up to attack.
Stacy was breathing hard, gripping Bob's shoulder to keep from being seperated by the bloodthirsty mob. Soon after, the infantry rose up over a steep hill. Bob no longer had a line of sight to what was going on ahead, but what happened next chilled him to the bone. As the first line of soldiers clambered over the hill, a murderous storm of GDI gunfire simply devoured them where they stood. Ripping their bodies to shreds; their fanatical shouts abruptly cut short. Bob just stared in terror at the sight. It was even more shocking to see the next line of infantry simply clamber over the bodies of their comrades and race over the hill; still screaming in jubilation. The result was even more brutal this time. They looked like puppets whose strings had been instantly cut as their bodies toppled off of the edge of the hill and dissappeared from sight.
Bob frantically reached over and took a hold of Stacy's hand from his shoulder. He looked back at her slowly. There were tears in her eyes, and her expression said it all: she wasn't ready to die. Bob wanted to simply reach over and take her away from this place, but it was impossible now. The infantry consuming every inch of space around them simply powered forward like a tidal wave, taking the two of them helplessly to the cliffs of death.
"Stace!" Bob yelled, barely hearing his own voice over the mayhem around him. Stacy just gripped his hand tighter and pursed her lips. The soldiers around them picked up their fervour and sent the two sprawling over the hill. Bob caught a spine chilling view of the GDI weaponry as he fell: thirty or so APC's, countless riflemen, scores of Commando's. They had never stood a chance.
As Bob fell forward, he pulled Stacy towards himself, shielding her from the tumble so the two went rolling down the hill together. More gunfire ripped the air around them, punching into human flesh with meaty 'SCHNAKS!'.
Despite the carnage around him, Bob managed to say: "See you soon, Stace."
Stacy simply replied: "Later."
An titanic explosion erupted nearby, throwing hundreds of burning soldiers in every direction. More explosions followed as a merciless artillery barrage was brought down on the soldiers, breaking their lines helplessly. More gunfire, more shouting. Then silence.
X
General Steve Larkham surveyed the aftermath of the battle with sad eyes. Larkham had been previously retired, but had been brought back into service a year ago, and needless to say he'd already had enough. Though his posture and general physical shape hadn't faltered, his face was already creased with age and his hair a bleak silver. His warm green eyes were almost always drooped in battle fatigue, more than anything saying that he'd seen more than he had to. His desert orange Officers Cloak was caked in dust as was his matching cap, but he couldn't care less.
"Sir!" Major Kruschev approached from behind him. A soldier much like Larkham himself, tired of battle and and wanting for the war to simply end. Kruschev was a bit younger than Larkham, his hair still a dreary brown with matching eyes; hardened but weary. His strong Russian accent one of his key feautures. "I know what you may be thinking, General. But there was no other course of action for this situation. They simply refused to surrender. For them to charge at us from the hilltop was foolish…"
Larkham looked over at Kruschev drearily. The Neo-Russian Major was looking out over the quietened battlefield slowly.
"Foolish but admirable." Kruschev finished.
Larkham smiled sadly at his friend.
Several GDI soldiers were busy at work gathering the bodies of the fallen NOD troops, lining their bodies side by side and covering them with white drapes. Long pillars of smoke were rising from a distance away over the hill. The remnants of the NOD recon outpost.
Larkham was about to turn away from the sight until a distant call got his attention. Kruschev took notice of it as well.
"General!" A soldier amongst the bodies of the NOD troops called out; waving his arms. Larkham locked eyes with the soldier, who immediately pointed at one of the bodies and cupped his mouth with his free hand.
"This one's still alive!"
X
