- Advance Wars: Days of Ruin

-- The Penny Drops

-- Chapter 3: The Lazurian National Aquarium

I got walking as soon as I woke up. There was a small concern for Sickleford in the back of my mind as I moved down the streets but at the same time I knew she had probably moved on after supposedly killing all of those IDS Agents. I guess she really did considering no one visited me in the middle of my sleep and shot me. All it took was a duster anymore. There was a little aerial recon, a quick relay to HQ and your little hiding spot would either be shot to hell or blown to hell. No, she would just be another one out there amongst the ruins along with the IDS forces. The only difference between her and me is that she was on her own side, with a sniper rifle and plenty of ammo. In one way I wanted to meet her again so I could kill her, and another way I never wanted to be shot at by her ever again. It was so… It made me… I was so angry. Why did she have to go crazy over something like the Creeper? Our little outfit wasted an entire town that had gone Creeper crazy and never looked back. Plenty of people were infected but no one was dying right away. You got some random aches here and there, but between all the fighting going on you probably had a better chance to get killed by a bullet than the friggin' virus.

And that's when I started to come across the Creeper people that Sickleford had mentioned earlier. They were all advanced cases, and way past their prime. All of them were just mounds of twisted vines and plants scattered along the streets and found hiding behind shattered foundations and busted cars. I had only really seen the Creeper through photographs, and the Polaroid's didn't disappoint. The Creeper virus grew right out of your body with green vines with sickly looking orange, purple and yellow flowers blooming on top of it. And the flowers weren't even nice to look at. They all looked like little mouths that would bite anything that got too close. All the ones I came across I only glanced at once just so I knew where they were and could avoid them at all costs. Passing through it was easy enough to ignore then forget them in quick succession. But I began to wonder what it was like for Sickleford, having the opportunity of staring at them for hours on end. Watching the little vines worm their way out from underneath some poor bastard's skin and bloom into another nightmarish petal formation.

Lucky for me I could push all of that out of my mind as I reached the large empty parking lot of the Lazurian National Aquarium. I was surprised to find some rusty tanks and recons filling in the massive void, only because they'd never move again. The Aquarium itself reminded me of a Venn diagram. Three wide circles stacked on top of each other in the shape of a "Y". The front entrance was up a big set of steps with the glass doors shattered in seventy places. Even as I stood at the entrance, the awful smell of dead things wafted out into the open. My gasmask only helped deal with the smell only slightly; probably just enough so that I didn't throw up or gag every time I took a breath. No doubt the whole place was just covered with rotting fish of varying sizes and standing water from all the tanks that either burst or managed to hold together. Nothing could have possibly survived in there, and I knew that no one in their right mind was going to find me here unless they were as desperate as I was. There was one more draft of awful decomposing things before I finally committed to going inside.

The entrance lobby did not disappoint. It was decorated with dripping vents, waterlogged pamphlets, and more awful smells. There was a starfish display in the ceiling for visitors to strain their necks looking upwards at when they got caught in a long line. But apparently the shockwaves of the meteor impacts had broken it and all the water that used to be in the tank had already made its way onto the floor. Dead rotting starfish, big and small, were scattered all over. I quickly moved on only to find the main hub that branched off into the other two circles. It reminded me of a mall, only instead of stores there were doors leading to all sorts of displays. I tried to find the one that sounded the least disgusting post-meteor impact destroying tanks and the general neglect causing the filtering systems to shut down permanently. Somehow my brain decided that "Lazuria's Ocean Life" was most promising and I headed through a broken double door.

My boots went splash into ankle high water. And it wasn't the blue kind of water either. It reminded me of the river. Brown, sprinkled with particles of who knows what. I would have been concerned of catching some disease if I wasn't already infected with the Creeper. Nothing could possibly be worse in this place than what I already had. I found that the reason for the flooding was because one of the larger tanks displaying massive schools of fish had shattered right down the middle. This tank acted as a whole wall for the hallway and through the shattered glass was an empty open area filled with fake rocks and rotting plant life. If the lights were on, I probably could have seen the rotting schools of fish too. I continued on, learning that the flooding probably could have been worse if it weren't for a couple huge tanks holding together. These tanks were for dolphins and whales, only that the tanks holding together were seemingly worse than the ones that had broken. The end result was a tank of mirky brown water swirling with skeletons and half rotted mammals. There was even one of those tunnels that ran along the bottom of the tank so you could look up at the once living creatures. Now it looked like a place only second to hell in terms of how inviting it ranked.

The first employees only door I found, I kicked open and entered a small access hall lined with pipes and emergency lights. I had to get up; I had to find some way to the roof. Whether stairs or ladders or I don't care. I was ready to climb the cables of a derelict elevator if it weren't for my broken arm. I ended up finding some high tech monitoring station for a number of the tanks. The equipment that hadn't short circuited or been smashed to hell was on all red. They had plenty of monitors but only one was working, and I was impressed as hell that it was. I suppose in a way the Lazurian National Aquarium was probably equipped in half the spirit that it could go on after a power outage or long term drought. But I bet no one planned it ever having to outlast the end of the world. All the filtering devices for the tanks had died out a long time ago, and the only thing left over now was an aquarium of corpses and a smell of fishy death. I took a seat at a rolling chair next to the monitoring station and turned my radio on.

"Relay. Relay. I made it to the Aquarium." I said while staring at the working monitor. It was concentrated on the central hub and probably one of the few cameras that didn't short circuit.

"Fencer!? What the hell have you been doing all this time?"

"I told you, I was heading towards the Aquarium. I made it."

"Did I give you that order?" He yelled. "Are you crazy? First the sniper, now you! The whole battalion is coming apart!"

"You mean Sickleford. She's shooting everything. She's crazy."

"You mean- she's lost it?"

"Completely. She almost killed me."

"And you're at the Aquarium now?"

"I just said that."

He started to hum, like there was a little factory forming ideas inside his head. I had heard him do it every time he improvised or came up with something. Before I could say anything, he had made a decision. There wasn't going to be any rescue yet.

"IDS is moving towards the Aquarium. They're probably going to make it their new field HQ considering all the ground we gave them."

"What? What did you say," I interrupted. "You've moved back further? How far!?"

"Tannenbauer and Marshall."

I almost dropped my radio. That was too far. There was no way. Not even a Transport Copter was going to make that distance without getting shot at or chased down by a Duster plane. Maybe before when the Aquarium was spitting distance from the dividing line in the city…

"The only way you're going to get out is if you kill the enemy commander." He told me.

"What about Sickleford? There's a whole army plus a crazy sniper after me?"

"You are to kill her too."

"No! This operation is failed. Get me out of here! I'm done!"

"Whose fault is that?"

"No! Bullshit!" I stood up. "You don't kill someone's boss and magically win the war!"

"You're right, but without their commander their lines would have dissolved and we would have easily moved in to secure you. Your only choice is to do the job you either too lazy or incompetent to do the first time. Relay out."

He then cut the call off on me. I didn't even get to tell him that my broken arm was getting worse, that I was hiding out in what might as well have been a house of spoiled fish guts. Not to mention, IDS was coming to me. They were all over, but after my attempt they were sure to have a bulk of forces covering their commander. I went over my equipment again. There was the assault rifle, the revolver anyone would swear you were overcompensating for something for using it, a proximity mine and a knife. The room began to shake which meant only one thing. There were Wartanks approaching. You could feel them a mile away, hear them if you were outside. I had to get to the roof, or some kind of high ground. Then my eyes wandered to the working monitor. There were IDS Agents already in the main hub… securing the building.

- Next Chapter: Stormfront