Dark, foreboding forest 4:30 PM...
It had been a little over an hour now and Jon was simply eating in silence. He payed the fox, or "Renamon," no mind as she simply sat on top of the tree and observed him with those annoying as hell and mean looking eyes.
Jesus Christ this thing has so much goddamn patience. How long has it been?
Jon Checked the time and took note that it had been exactly an hour and a half since his whole "trying to punch a hallucination" fiasco. He kept nibbling his MRE until he finally finished the package of food. Afterwards, he merely sat in silence, partially mourning for his lost teammates and partially planning as to what he was going to do from there on out.
It's a shame to see them go, but at the end of the day I still have a mission to complete. I didn't make it that far in the forest so I should be able to head back to the AO on foot in relatively good time. I gotta finish off those disgusting bastards once and for all.
As he got up, he took note of the armor he had. Perhaps, given his new situation in which indirect fire was not available, he should switch out to the stealthier armor.
With a small grunt, Jon walked over to the back of the smashed vehicle and began to take off his SPCS.
Renamon, intrigued by the armor system, merely continued watching him.
Interesting, the heavy garb is coming off, for what reason? She thought to herself.
As Jon stored the SPCS in the truck he took out the GHOST armor and immediately Renamon noticed the vast difference between the two armors. Giving in to curiosity, she jumped down from her branch and walked up to Jon. Once she reached him she began scrutinizing the strange armor he had in his hands.
Jon noticed her and looked at her for a second.
"What the hell do you want? Oh I see, you like this armor?" He waved the light armor around and the fox simply nodded.
As her curiosity got the best of her she finally spoke up for the first time since the punch incident, "How is that clothing... Doing that?"
Jon smiled, "As a hallucination, you're a figment of my imagination right? Therefor you come from my brain, and since I know how this armor works so should you."
Renamon simply tilted her head and frowned slightly at his reply, unsure of what he was even talking about.
"I'm not a hallucination, where ever did you even get such an idea?"
"Shut up, I need to put this armor on and head back to the AO to finish those bastards off. I don't need a hallucination bothering me the whole way there."
"I'm just as real as you are..."
"Yeah yeah whatever, if you're going to follow me then shut the hell up and stay out of my sight when I'm aiming."
The scout put on the armor and immediately he began to blend in with the surroundings. The GHOST armor provides a transparency rate of around 80% transparency, so the once bright grey soldier turned in to a dark almost unnoticeable blob. The GHOST armor also came with GHOST tactical weapon, helmet, and legging covering which would be attached to their respective places in order to make the soldier mostly invisible. After he made sure his armor was working he immediately set off in the opposite direction of where his truck was facing towards Chang'an.
"On the rooooooad again, all by myself with just a hallucination for company..."
Jon began to sing a little tune as he walked through the forest, a familiar one that had been around for about a century now.
"March along, sing our song, with the army of the free
Count the brave, count the true, who have fought to victory
We're the army and proud of our name
We're the army and proudly proclaim
First to fight, for the right
And to build the nation's might
And the army goes rolling along
Proud of all we have done
Fighting till the battle's won
And the army goes rolling along
Then it's HI HI HEY!
The army's on its way
Count off the cadence loud and strong
For where er'e we go
You will always know
That the army goes rolling along
Valley forge, Custer's ranks
San Juan Hill and Patton's tanks
And the army went rolling along..."
Chang'an AO 6:45 PM...
Jon reached the AO in a slightly pissed off manner. As he had predicted, the bright yellow vixen had followed him the entire way to the village.
Casting his annoyance aside, he turned around and quickly debriefed her on what she could and couldn't do.
"Alright world's most annoying hallucination, I've got a job to do and you can't interfere. Let's lay down some ground rules since you seem to be independent despite being my hallucination. Rule #1 You cannot go in front of me, you'll fuck things up. Rule #2 no shouting, I can still hear you, although you're not bad about being noisy so I'll give you that. Rule #3 When I'm in the zone engaging the PLA, don't interact with me in any way, I can't lose my focus. Got it?"
The vixen, still frowning from his misunderstanding, nodded her head.
The two entered the village cautiously as Jon stuck to the walls and corners to maximize his camouflage. The bright yellow fox however, stuck out like a sore thumb with her bright yellow coat in contrast to the dark, damp, and destroyed huts. Honestly, she didn't have that much of an idea in terms of what was going on (she had never been in a war before, sure she's been in plenty of battles with other digimon, but never was she in a legitimate large scale war complete with all the different facets of war involved) and she had no clue that she should have been hiding with him in the corners.
15 minutes after they had entered the village Jon finally spotted some of the PLA forces.
"Tangos spotted, preparing to engage."
The PLA soldiers were completely unaware of the scout who was a good 165 or so feet away from them. Jon had been getting his aim corrected the entire time and was finally feeling confident that he had a good shot. There were 4 PLA soldiers in total so his target acquisition had to be fast and accurate in order to down them all at once.
The marksman slowed his breathing and went the left most target of them all. He lined up his cross-hairs and said his mental prayers before taking the first shot.
In an instant, the high speed .30-06C bullet traveled through the air and smacked the PLA soldier center mass (chest area), completely penetrating his armor before puncturing his lungs. The shock-wave of the bullet ripped his insides up as his heart was torn and his spleen exploded. The soldier dropped dead instantly.
Hardly half a second later another bullet shot through the air and punctured the skull of one of the remaining PLA soldiers, dropping him in a second.
At this point the other two shouted as they knew what was going and tried to run for cover, but just before they made their mad dash a third bullet sliced through the air and tore open one of the two remaining soldiers' heart.
The last PLA soldier was able to run under cover, safe from any long range fire.
Goddammit, he's got cover, he might be requesting back-up right now.
Renamon simply stood bemused at the whole scene. Never before had she seen such a thing. Jon pulled the trigger on his skinny little blaster and immediately the soldiers who were a good distance in front of her (although she had great eye sight so she could see them clearly) dropped dead. Blood oozed from their bodies and in some cases the bullet was so strong that some of their insides blew out the other side of their bodies. She had never witnessed something really die before. Every time she battled digimon they would just disappear into fine digital dust in the air once they were defeated. This way of dying, with blood spattered everywhere and the guts strewn across the floor made her feel sick. Even though she understood the concept of biological beings dying she never knew that in fights they could die in such a horrifying way that would have made even the strongest of digimon hurl.
"Follow me ya little shit we gotta take that last guy out."
Jon looked at her and noticed her just standing in shock. He got aggravated, whether she liked it or not, her standing there was distracting him at a critical moment.
"Goddammit you stupid piece of shit I said follow me!"
He made to grab her and when he put his arm around hers he felt something. It was fur, soft fur, and there was substance behind that fur. He could feel the muscles behind the fur of the arm he grabbed and his eyes opened wide. The realization struck him.
In the midst of his realization, he didn't notice the PLA soldier rearing his head around the corner looking to take a shot. The digimon and mostly-invisible man were simply sitting ducks staring dumbly into space.
The PLA soldier fired his AK 103 derivative but couldn't really tell what was there other than a yellow blob in the corner.
The bullets slowly ripped through the air and smashed the hut next to the dazed digimon, bringing Jon back to reality.
"Shit he knows we're here!"
Another bullet from the AK went flying through the air before impacting against Jon's armor, knocking the wind right out of him for a couple seconds, but the armor stayed true and prevented the bullet from doing any more harm than that.
Jon, having regained his senses, grabbed onto the Digimon's arm and dragged her into the debris with him. He grabbed a few piece of debris lying down and made a tiny wall in front of them. It wasn't really a strong wall but with a few pieces of concrete that were nearby it definitely provided SOMETHING in terms of protection.
"Hey you! You need to get the hell out of here now, this is going to be a full fledged firefight and I can't look after your ass if you get hit!"
The fox regained her senses and jumped high into the air before disappearing from Jon's view.
"You have to be fucking kidding me... That fox could have just done that the entire time..."
He noticed that the PLA soldier stopped shooting and he decided to take his head out of cover to see what the situation was.
The Chinese soldier was standing dumbfounded at what he had just seen. One second he was shooting at a yellow blob, the next second that blob jumps high in the air and disappears. Jon capitalized on the enemy's confusion and lined up his shot.
The .30-06C bullet silently exited the barrel of the gun and traveled straight through the air before smashing through the soldier's left eye. It punctured his eye and went straight through his brain and exited the back of his skull, leaving a huge chunk of brain matter on the floor.
"Don't fuck with the cav scouts bro."
Jon stood up and surveyed the area before approaching the dead bodies.
He laughed a little once he reached them. The soldiers wore an obsolete standard steel plating armor and had decades old AK 103s that were also obsolete (the big but very slow bullets couldn't punch through even the lighter GHOST armor).
His mind wandered towards the strange fox.
"Where the hell did that thing jump off to?" He thought aloud.
Jon kept moving on with the mission as he ventured off deeper and deeper into the village, eventually passing the once smoldering grave of his teammates. His gut screamed at him to turn around and get the hell out of here but his sense of duty kept his head looking straight forward and his legs moving forward.
At that moment, he heard a slight thump behind him and immediately he turned around and brought up his Garand.
"Oh it's you again..."
The bright yellow fox merely frowned slightly at his response before she herself spoke up in an apologetic tone.
"It was cowardly for me to have simply abandoned you. I've fought many foes before, but, never like this... This is different, the deaths are horrendous compared to fighting other digimon, it's almost disgusting."
Jon smiled at her innocence.
"Welcome to war. After a couple days you get used to it and realize that it's either their brains out on the street or yours. And what the fuck is a digimon?"
Renamon tilted her head at his question.
"Do you not know of digimon?"
"No, am I supposed to? In fact, by discovering you I think I pretty much just discovered a new species."
The digimon collected herself before informing him about digimon.
"Digimon is short for digital monster. Digital monsters are creatures that-"
BOOM!
A mortar shell landed a dozen yards from them in a hut and blew it up, sending wooden shrapnel everywhere.
"I'll listen to you some other time, but I think for today we gotta evac this place and go back to the camp, they're calling mortar fire on our position and I don't wanna stick around any longer."
Three more PLA soldiers down, not that good for an entire day but it's 3 more closer to finishing this mission he thought to himself.
Dark, foreboding forest 8:15 PM...
The duo sat by the HUMVEE sharing an MRE as Renamon talked about digimon.
Jon learned the basics. Essentially, digimon were a digital race (yet they somehow had biological/biological based bodies which confused him) of monsters who were created after humanity began developing computers and the internet. They came in all shapes and forms and ever since an algorithm was made for them by some guy way back when they could even evolve. Renamon was the name of the particular digimon that was sitting next to him. She really wasn't sure as to how she ended up in his world.
Another thing he took note of about the world she was living in before was that it sounded as if the humane race there was technologically behind several decades.
"Okay I get it. So in essence, you're a digital "monster" although you just look like a variation of a fox to me. You also have some pretty cool combat techniques, you can jump really fucking high and run super fucking fast while at the same time remaining rather silent. You could be a useful asset to me but for now since I have yet to see anything I'll just assume your as capable as an unarmed and untrained civilian."
At that remark, Renamon seemed slightly aggravated. Her already thin eyes became thinner in a sort of glare.
"Sorry, but it's the first time humanity here has ever met a fairy tale. But come hell or high water I'm finishing this goddamn mission, so until you show me that you can be an asset, I'm going to ask you to please stay out of my way."
"I'm far from defenseless."
Jon rolled his eyes.
"Perhaps so, but you have to show me something cool and useful and maybe I'll reconsider."
Renamon stood up and leaped high in the air as Jon, while watching her, continued to eat from his MRE. After a couple seconds Jon heard a small thump behind him.
He turned around only to be greeted by Jon.
"What... The... ffff..."
Jon stared at his mirror image. The armor, his light face, his dark brown hair, his brown eyes, everything was the same. The only things missing were things not "directly" attached to him like his MK1 Garand. It was the freakiest thing he had ever seen.
A smirking Renamon then looked at his name tag shortly before saying "Hello, my name is Jon" in a voice that matched his perfectly.
Jon however took note that she looked at his nametag and began to punish her for her mistake.
"Alright Jon, what is your pay grade? What is your MOS? What is your MOSC? What country do you fight for? Who is your commander?"
Renamon froze up and Jon immediately stepped forth and admonished her.
"That's a very neat trick you got there. In fact, that can get you many places, and it can help me finish this mission in a millisecond. The only issue is that even though you can take on the appearance of others you can't necessarily blend in all too well since you don't know jack crap. At the very best, once you infiltrate the PLA they'll suspect you're sick or something since you most likely don't understand their language and you won't understand half of what they say due to your lack of knowledge about the military and its organization."
Renamon, although taken aback, was able to correct him on one of his points.
"I come from the digital world, although I may not understand these organizations I certainly understand multiple languages, assuming that the languages here are 100% identical to the languages in my other world since you and I can understand and speak to each other."
"Alright, I concede 10% of my point, but you're still not ready in terms of sabotage. Hold up for a second."
Jon took out his tactical tablet from inside his armor.
"Unfortunately, the WiFi is all but dead here since this primitive part of China has yet to ever do anything about its infrastructure. That being said though, I still have an app from when I was taking classes at the training program. In there you'll find almost everything you need to know about the military. It's a crap-ton of stuff to take in considering the short time frame we have but so long as you can get the very basics you should be able to blend in with the PLA guys. Their army might be structured in a slightly different way but I doubt there is too wide of a gap, and if you have general knowledge you should be able to pick up on what they're talking about anyway."
Renamon smiled as she fiddled with the piece of communications-centered technology.
"I'm a digimon, my origin lies with technology like this. I can soak up every ounce of information on this tablet in a nano-second if I so wished."
"Then do it and go to sleep or something. We've got a day ahead of us tomorrow and we need to be ready to deliver massive damage to the enemy, got it? A soldier well slept is a soldier well kept and a soldier well kept is a soldier you don't wanna fuck with."
Jon turned off his helmet flashlight as Renamon sat there with his tablet, fiddling with it. It was a machine she had never seen and yet she felt connected to it on an unprecedented level. It took her all of one minute to learn everything she could learn from the app before she turned it off and curled up to go to sleep.
Chang 'an AO, 10 PM...
Colonel Liu Wei observed the footage that one of his soldiers had sent to him before being taken out by the Americans. In the footage was what appeared to be a tall and slender yellow fox hundreds of feet away from the camera the soldier had.
The colonel grunted in anger at the loss of his six troops the past two days. Once the commander of a mighty battalion he was now down to only a platoon-full of men at best. He had around 25 capable soldiers and 10 wounded soldiers. He couldn't receive any sort of aid since the Americans had pushed to the east of his position, effectively cutting him off from the rest of mainland China. Basically, what he had was simply what he had and nothing more.
"We need to strike at the American operative on our terms, not his. At this point we're just going to be scraped little by little until we have a gashing wound from which we can never recover. It's bad enough our battalion has been reduced to this, we cannot allow a single American to take us all out like this. Set up cameras around the perimeter of the village, first we need to find out where he's coming from. Then, we can strike at him and kill him. His fire-team is already dead so he's just a one man army along with this peculiar yellow fox whom we will capture once we've dealt with the American. You are all dismissed, don't fail me."
The aggravated colonel waved his hands at his men before climbing into his bed.
Dark, foreboding forest, 11 PM...
Jon was sleeping peacefully. The weary soldier, isolated from the world, his world at least, would live to fight another day, and ultimately that was all he cared about when he truly thought about it.
The irony in this story... Too much! Bleh XD
Anyways, like always, I'll be re-reading this thing like CRAP too make sure I spot any mistakes, feel free to leave a review if you find anything and always feel free to leave a little ol like for little ol me :3
Word of the chapter (I forgot to do this for last chapter rofl, I so sorry! This is like, going to be my tradition. Something that no author does, I wanna be unique, like, have my own personality ya know?) = bemused
bemuse = to be puzzled, confused, etc.
Military stuff = target acquisition
Target acquisition = the detection, identification, and determining of the location of a target in sufficient detail in order to permit the effective employment of force, be it lethal or non-lethal in nature.
Like always, more is to come... (Yay we beat the 10k word barrier! This story is officially legitimate and not just one of those stories where the author gets excited, makes a couple chapters, and abandons it!)