July 12, 2017 -

Hello all! I'm not dead! And probably about to get sacked for a lack of activity!

YAY!

Okay, but seriously. I've been SUPER busy with school and Karate and shit like that for, well, months since I last even touched a word processor, and it's been super rough trying to write right now. Here's something I was working on for a while. I will probably end up with little this summer for me to publish, but fear not! I have more plot bunnies than the appropriate metaphorical allegory here, and I want to first get done with a chapter of Cat's Eye (No, I did not abandon it) and eventually I want to do something that involves shell-shocked newly-returning Vietnam veterans (only the most innocent and cheerful of all protagonists in this corner of the website).

Edit: Fixed some terminology.

June 7, 1944, Normandy, France.

Captain Barker marched along the muddy path to the command tent, his boots squelching as he took step after purposeful step to his destination. The captain appeared irritable and grouchy on the outside, but internally, he was deep in thought. It would be just a matter of a few days until they would have to move out again, cutting through the heart of German-occupied territory on their way to blaze a path to Berlin, with the rest of the Allied force.

For now, the beachhead was secure, but Omaha as a whole was far from being Allied-controlled. It was definitely getting there, but it would probably be at least a few days until the troops stationed there, including his own in the 29th, would have the beaches secure. Then the higher-ups would have to ship across supplies, armor, and men in order to support a push into the mainland.

Barker didn't think that his men would have to move out again so soon after being in the chaos that was Omaha, and he hoped that they'd all get a chance to recover and let the fresh reinforcements deal with the shit they'd all gotten themselves into, but you never knew with the Army. Yeah, he'd read All Quiet on the Western Front, and while he knew that the German Army of the Great War and his own were similar like a plane was the same as a car, he couldn't help but still be cynical over the decisions of those who would decide his fate for him.

But his troops' reassignment wasn't the only thing putting Barker ill at ease that day. The girl that he'd found somehow stowed away in the landing craft yesterday was still sticking around. She seemed to have no idea what was going on, which was quite unbelievable, to be honest. How could she not have at least gotten word-of-mouth about Pearl Harbor or Poland? How in the hell did she even manage to sneak onto a landing craft for the invasion in the first place if she didn't even have a clue where she was?

Figuring that she was maybe from England, Barker procured a map of the country, after some prodding from a tired-looking corporal, and told her to point out where she lived, so that his bosses could take her back without much trouble on his part. The thing that made his brow raise in confusion was her admission that the map was utterly unfamiliar to her, and she requested a world map to see which continent she was on. Barker thought she might be screwing with her at that point, but decided to humor her, if nothing else than to get her to calm down.

The real surprise came when she claimed not to recognize anything from that map, too. What in the hell that meant, he didn't know. But he did know that meant that she had nowhere to go if they decided to ship her off to England or back to the States.

Barker was always one for taking life one step at a time. For now, he pushed the thoughts of the curious Ruby Rose out of his head, took a quick swig of whiskey from his hip flask, and strode into the command tent, intent on getting his briefings out of the way before anything else.

On a good day, Ruby Rose, huntress-in-training of 15, was usually the most dangerous person in the room. Even if she wasn't exactly the most adept at social interaction, she was inwardly at least confident in her ability to take care of herself. Between her experiences, her Uncle Qrow's combat training, and her early enrollment at the prestigious Beacon Academy for huntsmen, she wasn't one to be trifled with.

However, the revelations of the previous day and this one left her shaken to her very core. Yesterday's battle showed the young huntress just exactly what it was like to be surrounded by so much death, and this morning's conversation with Barker convinced her that, through some sort of insane means, she had wound up in a completely unknown and foreign world, with its own cultures, histories, and conflicts. The maps that he had shown her were completely unrecognizable, and though she hated to admit it, because, frankly, they'd be completely unreasonable if she said any of them out loud, she couldn't deny that her observations were correct: she was in a completely new world.

Barker had then gone off on his own, muttering something about orders. He'd told her to stay put where she was - that is, in a muddy trench, sitting next to an ammunition crate - and that he'd figure things out when he got back. That left Ruby Rose by herself, with nothing on her save for the grimy, dirty clothes on her back, the old-fashioned rifle Barker gave to her the previous day, whatever ammunition she had on her belt and in her magazine pouch, and her weapon.

Her weapon! Letting out a gasp of excitement and realization, Ruby pulled her beloved Crescent Rose sniper-scythe from its place at the small of her back and examined it. Ruby's beloved signature weapon was in dire need of some maintenance, she observed. The rifle's body was absolutely caked in mud and sand, and the huntress knew that her tool of trade would need some serious maintenance before she would go out again into whatever she'd somehow landed herself into.

She looked around for a cloth to spread out on something so that she could get to work, but found nothing, save for a faded old uniform that looked little better than rags at that point. Ruby grimaced when she realized what had to be done. Swallowing down her anxiety, she reached up to her neck, unclasped the pins holding on her signature cape, and spread her precious cape over the lid of the ammunition crate, resigning herself to the reality that it would soon be stained with gun oils and grease.

She then reached to her pack to retrieve her cleaning kit, then dejectedly remembered that she had left it back in Team RWBY's dorm room. But then she remembered that old military rifles usually carried cleaning kits in their stocks, and reached for the rifle Barker had left her with, quickly locating the buttplate and retrieving the rifle's cleaning kit from inside the wooden furniture.

With her weapon and the acquired cleaning kit, she set herself to work, carefully and smoothly unfolding Crescent Rose with a series of metallic clanks and removed the scythe portion of it via carefully punching out a few pins, which let the blade come off of the barrel in two sections, which Ruby then dissassembled further. As for the rifle, Ruby separated Crescent Rose into its constituent parts- barrel, muzzle brake, bolt, receiver, trigger, and folding shaft stock.

Ruby was very pleasantly surprised to find that the scope was completely fine, not cracked or dented or otherwise damaged in any way. She let out a sigh of relief, comfortable in knowing that the scope's zero was undamaged and that she wouldn't have to waste what little valuable ammunition she still had for her beloved weapon in trying to make it accurate once again.

As for the other parts, Ruby went about her normal business cleaning and oiling them as usual, only going the extra mile for the parts caked in mud and sand from the events before. Thankfully, she engineered her weapon so that its internal components and action would be sealed off from the elements in the event of this very situation from ever becoming a problem, so it was only the body she needed to wipe down and clean. It wasn't ideal, as the paint still ended up being obscured under a very thin layer of grime and mud in the end, but it would do.

Ruby was so engrossed in her task that she didn't even notice two men enter the trench she sat in. She only noticed them when one of them cleared his throat in order to get her attention, at which she snapped her head up, surprised.

"You lost, little lady?" the one who got her attention asked. He was a man not much older than herself, with dark, close-cropped hair and a mustache and holding a burning cigarette between his fingers, and he and his compatriot were clad in the same uniforms as Barker had been. The one who spoke hung his helmet at his hip and held a cheap-looking submachine gun in his hands, not quite pointed at her, but enough to make a point with his finger clearly on the gun's trigger.

Ruby shook her head in the negative and didn't try to stop the second man, who looked older than the first, was clean-shaven, and wore his own helmet in its rightful place atop his head, from reaching over and deftly swiping Ruby's borrowed rifle from where it leaned against the trench wall beside her. If he noticed the cleaning kit missing from the stock, he didn't say anything about it. He had another rifle just like it over his back on a sling.

The first man nodded his head, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. "Well," he said, "it really does seem like you're lost. After all, I don't think that a place like this is really one for a girl like yourself, much less a kid like you. Why don't you come with us and we can get you outta here, what do you say?"

Ruby shook her head again, this time saying, "I-I was just waiting for, uh, Captain Barker to get his, um, orders! Orders, yeah... He said he'd figure out everything when he got back!" Ruby cringed internally at her stuttering. It was just a couple of guys, why was she so terrible at talking to new people?

The two men exchanged a glance, and Ruby could swear she saw a silent conversation pass between the two of them. Then the first man spoke up.

"Yeah, I dunno what the hell the Captain's doing, but you're not allowed to be here. You'll have to come with us."

"I'm not about to do that!" Ruby blurted out, "This is the best chance I have at figuring out what's going on!"

She half-regretting opening her mouth that time, because it seemed that that startled the men into action. The first man trained his submachine gun on her and the second tensed up, as if about to pounce like a tiger.

"I ain't saying it one more time," growled the first man, his nonchalance and cool demeanor wiped away like a blown-out candle's flame, "You're coming with us, whether you like it or not!"

The three of them were frozen for what felt like hours, locked in an intense standoff, before finally, thankfully, they were interrupted by a deep, irritated, and, most of all, familiar, voice.

"Sergeant Smith! Sergeant Preston! What in the actual shit is going on here?!"

Ruby whipped her head over to face the source of the voice, idly noting that both of the now-named sergeants were doing much the same.

Captain Barker stood like a sullen scarecrow, his frame hunched over in what appeared to be exhaustion and frustration, and his glare was like a laser focused in on Sergeants Smith and Preston, who wilted under the superior officer's gaze. His unkempt hair managed to look even more frazzled than it had that morning. He held a bundle of clothes and a helmet underneath an armpit.

"Oh, uh, sir!" the first man, the relatively talkative one, Smith, said, "We found this little girl here- "

"Hey!" Ruby exclaimed, but she was ignored.

"- who obviously should not be inside this military zone, being a civilian and all," Smith continued as if nothing happened, "and wanted to escort her somewhere where she would be exponentially less likely to catch a stray sniper's bullet, for example."

"That will not be necessary, sergeant," Barker replied. "She's with me. We have many things to discuss, and I would like it if I was at least within speaking distance of her to do so and not under some sort of military custody, sergeant."

Smith shut up, straightened up, and saluted crisply.

"Don't do nothin' bad, sir," Sergeant Preston said, uttering the first words Ruby had heard usher from his mouth.

"Get your mind out of the gutter, Preston. You know I'm not that kind of man."

The two sergeants then left the trench, leaving Ruby's rifle in Barker's hands, and went on their way after Barker ordered them to keep quiet about Ruby's presence in the camp.

Ruby found herself breathing a sigh of relief, but it was soon quashed when Barker fixed her with a glare and gave her disassembled weapon a pointed look.

"Pack that shit up before someone sees," he growled, "We're already attracting enough attention as it is."

Sheepishly, Ruby obeyed, deftly reassembling her beloved signature weapon with well-practiced motions until what was once a pile of assorted rifle components, blade pieces, and bits of painted metal was once more a fully-functional and beautifully deadly sniper-scythe, albeit still a bit dirty. With the flick of a hidden switch, she compacted the weapon down to its much more manageable compact form, and hung her tool of trade on the harness at the small of her back.

Once she was done, Barker waved her over to a more secluded part of the trench, away from prying eyes, and said, "You should probably come up with somewhere we can put you, kid, because you sure as hell do not want to be around guys like us for the time being."

Now Ruby found herself confused. "What do you mean?" she asked, cocking her head to the side, innocently.

Barker sighed. "You really don't know?" Ruby shook her head in the negative. "Fine. It all started over forty years ago, with the Great War. 'The War to End Wars', they called it. A whole lot of good that did. Some people got pissed off that the war didn't go their way or that they got shit on by the way it ended, and it left one country especially pissed off. About a decade ago, this guy - this bastard, actually - a guy named Adolf Hitler, came to power and began building an army to take over the world, even though that shit wasn't allowed. He invaded his neighbors and eventually we - the United States Army - got involved. You see what's happening?"

"Wait, you're military?"

"What, was it not fucking obvious looking at our weapons and uniforms?"

"Well, it's just that where I come from, the militaries are very, uh, different, to say the least. I thought you guys were maybe a militia or even civilians, since you don't wear armor and your weapons look so dated."

"Wow, kid, that thing about the weapons? That hurts, kid. It really does," Barker said, feigning clutching at his aching heart, "And armor? What do you think this is, the Middle Ages? Any armor that the average Joe can actually walk around in won't stop a bullet, that's for damn sure. Look, my point is, we're at war here, and war's not anywhere I'd want a kid like you to hang around."

"But I have to!" Ruby was indignant. "I've trained my whole life to help people! I can't just stay on the sidelines while people get hurt and die without doing anything about it! Besides, I still need to find a way back home, and you know exactly what I mean when I say that! Whatever thing that brought me here can send me back, and failing that I can try to find my friends wherever they've ended up!"

Barker sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Yep, I figured this would happen." He looked at her straight in her strange, silver eyes - the color gave him but an instant of pause - , and said, "You've got that look in your eyes, kid. A look I see in the recruits back in basic back home. The look that says that they've joined up to make the world a better place, and nothing short of life-destroying combat's going to change any of that for them. I dunno. Maybe you will actually be able to change something, but right now I can tell that you're not gonna leave us be whether we like it or not."

He tossed her the bundle of clothes he'd been carrying. "Here. It's an extra uniform, pretty big, too." A beaded necklace with a pair of gleaming metal tags hanging off of it joined the uniform in Ruby's arms. "Also snagged that from one of the unlucky bastards that didn't make it to the cliffs yesterday. Shitty move, I know. But I knew that it was the only chance we had of you actually being able to come with us. Change into them, assume your new identity, and hope to hell that everything turns out fine."

Barker planted the helmet he'd been carrying onto Ruby's head and stalked off, giving the teenage huntress-in-training some privacy to change, but not before yelling out, "And for God's sake, make sure you actually sound like a man! Jesus, you sound like a goddamn whistle!"

Ruby stared at the tags, seeing the name punched into the metal. Stanton, David H. The name she'd have to assume going forward if she stood any chance of seeing Remnant again. Try as she might, she just couldn't stop thinking about the dead man whose name she'd be effectively stealing from him. Was he that one whose guts were leaking out through his fingers, desperately calling for a medic? Was he the man whose legs were blown off and was left just quietly sobbing and praying for a painless death?

In the end, Ruby knew that there was absolutely nothing she could do about that, and so she changed into her new uniform - a white undershirt and a set of mottled-green fatigues - , tucked Stanton's identification tags under her new fatigue shirt, and put on her steel bucket helmet, taking care to do up her hair underneath so it wouldn't poke out from under the one piece of armor these soldiers were issued.

She noticed that Barker had also given her a rucksack of sorts to put her belongings inside. It had supplies within its folds, including spare ammunition clips for her wood-furniture rifle, an entrenching tool, and most surprisingly, a pistol and several full magazines. Ruby folded up her uniform, and threw it in, but not before removing a few choice items from her usual getup. Her bandolier belt, with its spare magazine pouch for Crescent Rose went on her hips, though she removed her trademark burning rose emblem from it, and her harness for stowing Crescent Rose away when not in use went back on her body as well.

Her signature scythe would have to remain inconspicuous, however, so she carefully wrapped her weapon up in a spare, worn-out cloth, and stowed it away at the small of her back.

Her kit and gear ready to go, she scooped up her other rifle and quickly familiarized herself with its design and operation. It was of the, bit dated, but still usable, rotating bolt, which indicated a gas system. It appeared to feed from small 8-round clips instead of a more conventional magazine, which was odd. It would force the wielder to dump their weapon's ammunition just to reload in the heat of combat. Otherwise, it would eject them using a switch on the side, Ruby noted, with a distinct metallic ping sound. The safety was a switch just ahead of the trigger, which she engaged after loading in a clip and letting the rifle strip a round into its chamber, mindful not to let it catch her thumb while doing so. It was a heavy thing, long too, but not too unlike some of the more old-fashioned huntsman weapons she'd seen in her day.

She did the same with the pistol. It was a slim weapon, yet heavy, being obviously made of high-quality steel. It had an external hammer and an exposed firing pin, which was quite the departure from the typical striker-fired or electronically actuated pistols she'd seen in the hands of police officers in Vale. The trigger was single-action, so she'd have to carry the gun cocked if it was to be useful as an emergency weapon. It fed from single-stack magazines instead of double-stack, or even helical, meaning that it had a pitiful capacity of only 7 rounds per magazine. Thankfully, the bullets were big, fat things, and she had no doubt that it could feasably punch a hole through most things that needed to be shot dead. The sights were terrible, though. Ruby found a safety in the grip of the weapon, ensuring a proper hold on the pistol to fire, and a thumb-actuated safety on the side. That one she clicked on after loading the pistol and chambering a round, then Ruby thrust it into a leather holster hanging from the front of her new uniform.

Ruby found Barker just outside the trench, on the ground level above the walls of the dug-out fortification. The older man was puffing on a dimly-lit cigarette which he held clenched between his fingers. He threw it to the ground and stamped on it with a boot as Ruby sidled up to him.

Barker gave her a once-over, before both grimacing and nodding at her. "You look decent enough, I suppose. I've seen recruits come off the buses with that build. Some of them don't shake it off, so you could probably pass as a young private, fresh off the boats, so long as you either disguise that shrill voice of yours or keep your mouth shut."

Ruby just frowned and nodded, but she still felt uncertain about all of this. However, before she could voice her concerns about the whole situation, she felt her guts twist and her stomach roared its fury at not being placated in so long. Ruby's face turned the shade of her namesake as she remembered that she hadn't, in fact, eaten anything all day or the day before, being a bit too busy getting caught up in not dying.

Barker coughed out a laugh. "Looks like we're going to have to test out your little 'disguise' quite soon, then. C'mon, the mess guys'll have something set up by now. Let's get some food in ya before you go and die on me."

Ruby followed Barker along to the mess, as Barker called it, where they would get their rations. They'd been traveling there in silence, avoiding conversation and interaction with the other uniformed Army men scattered around the camp as best they could, until they neared their destination. There weren't that many soldiers around, surprisingly, and no one seemed to pay attention to the pair, so Ruby asked Barker a question that had been nagging on her mind.

"Barker," Ruby whispered, "How'd you even get all this stuff for me, anyway?"

"Quartermaster owes me a hell of a lot of favors," Barker replied without missing a beat, "Cashed them in like a check and we were good to go, no questions asked."

"Oh."

The mess wasn't much to look at at all. It was just a wooden table and some benches holding up some pots filled with some sort of food, which was giving off an indescribably alluring scent to the starving young huntress named Ruby Rose. Whereas the room just smelled of mud, sadness, and a strange mixture of body odor and solvent, the food gave off something home-y and inviting, a metaphorical lighthouse of hope in the midst of a sea of not-food. Barker said they were B-rations, but she couldn't really care less about what he was saying, since hot food was right there and she just had to figure out a place to put it so that she could inhale the stuff.

Luckily, Barker came to her rescue, reaching into her gear and withdrawing an aluminum mess kit, which he opened up and poured some of that tantalizingly hot food onto before doing the same with his own and moving over to a nearby table. Ruby followed as if in a trance until Barker handed her an aluminum fork, spoon, and knife with which the young huntress-in-training, disguised as a soldier, used to wolf down her food with gusto.

Ruby didn't note anything about the food in terms of... well, anything, really. It was food and Ruby was hungry, plain and simple, so she didn't complain at all when she finished hers off, went back for seconds, then thirds, and finally came to a slow halt when the fourths disappeared and Ruby's stomach finally had a semblance of satiation to it once again. She sighed in contentment and slumped onto the table, resting her head on its oaken surface.

"Damn, this guy packs it away! Where's it all go?" came a gruff, if friendly, voice accompanied by its owner, a brown-haired man with friendly, wisened blue eyes, plunking himself down at their table, his own meal in hand. "Donnelly's the name," he said, extending his hand toward Barker, who returned it in kind, ("Barker") and Ruby, who shook it with probably too much force, if the grimace on Donnelly's face was to be believed.

"Uh," Ruby said before catching herself. "Um," she began, pitching her voice a few octaves lower with some difficulty, "my name's... uh," she wracked her brain for the name on the ID tags, "Stanton! David Stanton." Nailed it.

"Well, now, nice to meet ya," Donelly replied. "Ya know, ya gotta pretty young-lookin' face there. Sure gotta lotta hearts to break when we get to town, y'know?"

Ruby blushed furiously at that comment, but nodded wordlessly. Apparently, that was the right thing to do, because Barker gave her a barely-noticeable nod at that. Thankfully, the friendly man was hooked into conversation with Barker, diverting his attention from the huntress-in-hiding.

Barker had said that his next job was to put together his company, but given the casualties from the day before, he figured that it would be a useless endeavor for the first couple of days. Instead, he just let the soldiers (whether or not they were his) gather themselves up as best they could and recuperate. The men intermingled, if they tried to socialize at all, regardless of rank, and everyone seemed to be lost in a haze, their eyes unfocused and their speech heavy, as if the words they wanted to say were precious gold that they wouldn't waste.

Ruby stuck around Barker for the better part of a week, keeping mostly to herself while the older man was content to keep discussion to small talk, save for some questions relating to her circumstances. She watched as the men gradually began to pick themselves up and out of their stupor, the heavy melancholy in their eyes tempering into a cold determination, resolute in fulfilling their duty as soldiers in this world of war. While they organized themselves into platoons within their respective companies, Ruby stayed close to Barker's side, not really knowing where else to go.

Finally, the time came when some semblance of organization grew out of the chaos. Out of the company, which apparently at full strength would have numbered an easy 200-or-so men, only about 100 men remained, leaving the unit at four platoons strong. The fighting that had dwindled it had been unsurprisingly, in Ruby's eyes, intense, and the loss in manpower completely understandable.

Barker, as a captain, would apparently have commanded the entire company, but many officers gave their lives to the beaches, leaving the command chain with holes in it. Soldiers who were next in line were promoted to lead, or higher officers would, in Barker's case, be forced to take command of a smaller group of men. Therefore, Barker became the commanding officer of 18th Infantry, 1st Battalion, Company C, Rifleman Platoon.

Oh, he grumbled a bit about it, but Ruby could tell that it didn't really affect him that much. What he did didn't really matter, the question was if he did anything, and he would have to lead his men as best he could, regardless of the number under his command.

June 12, 1944, Normandy, France.

This was it. The Ruby Disguise Mk. 1's maiden run. Time to tell if she would be able to stay undetected in the middle of this damnable war in the midst of all these American soldiers.

She swallowed down the lump in her throat. Throughout the past week, she'd been sticking close to Captain Barker under the cover of an assistant from the reinforcements sent back over the English Channel, and now it was time to intermingle with the rest of the platoon, or risk coming under suspicion by the rest of the men. Especially so, since Barker informed her that the company had trained together and had grown somewhat close as a result. A new face like hers, appearing without explanation, would be highly suspect.

So Barker let her go on her way while he went to sort out the platoon's next move with his colleague officers. Ruby found her way to a relatively secluded spot in the platoon's designated area and started inspecting her rifle and pistol, finding little else to do, and let her mind wander. She was sure that anyone who was wondering about her presence would stop to talk to her, while the vast majority of the rest wouldn't really care anyway and would leave her to her own devices.

Eventually, though, she knew someone would come by. Someone always did, as she had learned from her first days at Beacon Academy.

"Hey, kid, give it a rest! I think if your weapons were going to fall apart, they'd do it already!"

Ruby looked up at the owner of the voice, then froze as she recognized the face of the man staring right back at her.

Sergeant Smith's dark grey eyes grew to the size of saucers as recognition dawned on his features. He opened his mouth to say something, but Ruby quickly reached out and clamped her hands over it before he could ruin... well, everything.

"If you want to talk, let's go someplace a little more..." Ruby looked around, spotting an opening between a couple of parked, unmoving, and vacant tanks, "private."

Ruby didn't know why Sergeant Smith didn't just blab about her the instant her hands let go of his mouth, but after rubbing his jaw with a grimace and shooting her a glare, he followed her to the tanks.

"Okay, why the hell are you still here?" he barked when they were safely out of sight and earshot.

Ruby frowned, sighed, and shook her head. "And here I thought that my disguise would at least survive one person, anyway."

Sergeant Smith smirked and said, "Kid, if there's one thing you should know about being in the military, it's that no plan survives the enemy. Furthermore, why the hell are you trying to be in the military?"

Ruby grimaced at his tone, but replied, "Look, the short version is that I don't have anywhere to go, and that this is the best way I can get back home."

"The best way, or just Captain Barker's way?"

"Well..." Ruby trailed off.

Smith sighed. "Look, I got a little brother back home. Little guy always just has to prove himself to his friends, to our folks, to the extended family- you get the point."

"But I'm not trying to prove anything!"

"Whatever you're trying to do, I just want to know if I can trust you not to get us all killed."

"I may not look it, but I'm a trained warrior! I can look after myself!"

Smith sighed. "Goddamned Captain..." he muttered to himself. "Well, I've known Barker for a long time, back in training, and if there's one thing I know about him, it's that he thinks things through. If you are what you say you are and he believes you, I guess that's good enough for me. I'll keep this between him, us, and Press, and we'll just have to see how badly this all falls apart."

Sergeant Smith turned to leave and rejoin the other men, but not before calling over his shoulder, "We'll get our orders soon, so I just hope that we all get to go back home on ships instead of boxes. I'll be keeping an eye on you."

"Oh, and one last thing: Barker gave the platoon a name. Welcome to Huntsman Platoon, kid."

A/N: Holy shit why am I still alive?

Okay, this chapter is quite bigger than what I'm used to and probably you guys too. However, I hope it's worth it, because it's probably going to be the only one for a while. Things will start getting underway in this story in the following chapters, and if you're wondering why Ruby isn't losing her shit, well never fear, shell-shock-induced mental breakdowns are here!

Beta read by CrazyQuilava as always.

Don't forget to Read, Review, Favorite, and Follow.

Peace!

-AnonymousInsomnia