"Chief? Chief please wake up."
I groaned and opened an eye before groaning even more at the soldier's face that way too close to mine. "Back off. I'm up." The soldier took a step back and saluted me.
I sat up on the bed and noticed with annoyance that all the pictures were still on the pillow next to me, on full display for the soldier to feast their eyes upon.
Great. So much for being emotionless.
I didn't even know this soldier's name.
Why were they waking me up anyway? Actually, that was a good question.
"What's going on?" I was not in a good mood. I had barely slept again and now this unfamiliar soldier was in my room, waking me up at the crack of dawn. Or at least, at what seemed to be the morning if the lights outside were anything to go by.
"Sir, uhm well-" "I am not a 'sir'. Never address as so again." The soldier widened their eyes and started blurting out apologies after apologies.
Fuck, I was not in the mood for this bullshit.
"Enough. Just tell me why you're here." The soldier straightened up and I rolled my eyes again. "Yes Chief. Soldier Cry sent me to get you. He and Lieutenant Nate need you."
No one fucking needs me.
I pushed the bitter thought away and stood up. I pulled the covers up and over the pictures and the box. I'll take care of it later.
I turned around and rolled my eyes at the soldier that was still just standing there, in my room, while I was only in a shirt and boxers.
"Do you want me to strip for you too? Get out of here! Tell Cry I'll be there in a minute!" The soldier widened their eyes for the second time today and scrambled out of the tent.
God fucking damn it. I hated everyone.
Why couldn't Cry come and get me himself anyway? I paused mid-action.
In fact, why hadn't he? It wasn't like he hadn't done it before. I glared at nothing in particular. If Cry was trying to piss me off, then he had succeeded.
I pulled a random shirt over my head as well as some blue jeans before putting on my shoes and walking out.
Fucking Cry. And fucking Nate too. It was like they had all ganged up on me to annoy me.
I took a deep breath as I arrived in front of the tent. I needed to remember what I'd learned yesterday. I probably needed to apologize to Nate.
I took another deep breath and walked in.
"Took you long enough." I did a double-take at Cry's annoyed tone. What was up with him today?
"Sorry I-" "Whatever. I just wanted to tell you that Nate and I are going to catch up with team green and team pink. There seemed to have been twice as many enemies as we first thought."
At the mention of his name, Nate looked up and I finally noticed him. He was sitting on a chair in the back of the tent, hunched over himself. Just like Cry, he was dressed in full battle gear.
"So you need me to come. Alright I'll-" "No we need you to keep watch." I was getting angrier and angrier by the second.
First Cry had woken me up at a fucking ungodly hour by a soldier I didn't know. Then, he'd scolded me and interrupted me -two time nonetheless-. And now this? Fuck that.
"You can't decide this shit without me." Cry glared at me and I took a step back. That was rare.
"No, but I can." Nate said while getting up and walking behind Cry. He put his hand on Cry's shoulder and I glared at the both of them.
So this is how they wanted to play it, huh?
Cry raised a brow. "I think that you've more than proved that you can't control yourself enough to lead anything. What kind of Chief can't even get along with their Lieutenant?"
Cry and Nate were both looking at me like I was the lowest shit on Earth. At least I think Nate was, I hadn't managed to look him in the eyes yet. I just couldn't after what had happened yesterday.
Cry was looking at me, almost daring me to say anything to him. I knew I couldn't say no. If I did, it would only confirm what he'd just said.
I needed to be responsible and think like a leader.
What would Ethan have done?
Ethan would've thanked them, told them that they trusted them but to still be careful. In that order.
"All right. Nate, I trust you to be careful and to rightfully lead our teams." I looked at Nate for the first time today and he seemed surprised. Cry too, but I didn't really care about Cry right now. Not after what he had pulled today.
"Sure..." I nodded at Nate. I glanced at Cry but his face wasn't giving anything away as to what he was thinking.
I turned around and left without nodding at Cry. He didn't deserve my approval.
Now I should find something to do while waiting for them to return. Standing around while not doing anything would be the death of me.
"Chief! Good to see you uhm... Do you have a sec?" Well here comes my something to do.
I turned around and stared at Ben. He had different colored dye from his hands all the way up to his elbows. He also had some splotches on his cheeks and I honestly didn't want to ask how he got them.
"Sure do. What's the matter?" Ben sighed in relief. "Well, as you can see, I'm having some trouble with the dyes you assigned me to create." I frowned.
Why couldn't anything ever go right in this camp?
"What's up with them?" Ben ran a hand through his hair and curse as he remembered that they were covered in dye.
"Oh you should go wash that off immediately if you don't want it to stain." Ben shrugged. "Well, that's the problem, they don't take. And on top of that I can't read Ethan's notes. I swear their handwriting is worse than chicken scratch." I chuckled at that. That was Ethan all right.
"Ok, let's go to your tent and I'll help you fix it." Ben shrugged. "Sure, but I doubt that you'll be able to decipher anything."
"Don't need to, Ethan taught me themselves." Ben perked up at that, as if remembering that I used to be closer to Ethan than most people.
"Oh. Well, that sure helps." I nodded absentmindedly.
We both walked to the hairdresser's tent and I sighed. This only helped reminding me that I needed a haircut real bad. My red dye had faded so much, it looked orange.
I walked in and sighed at the mess in front of me. Long gone were the days where everything would be exactly at its place, labelled and all.
"Well, we better get started."
I wiped at my forehead and smiled at Ben who plopped down on a chair.
"Fuck, I'm glad that's done." Ben chuckled. "So am I. Thank you for your help Chief."
"Thank you for taking on this work. And call me Mark, enough with the formalities." Ben smiled. "You know, I'm sorry to say this but... I'm only doing this for a small while. Being a hairdresser really isn't my thing." I nodded.
"With all due respect, I really think that you should do it." I frowned at that.
Ben looked agitated. She knew that she had crossed an invisible threshold. We weren't friends and merely had worked together. But I couldn't get angry at her when I knew that she was right.
Ben must've seen my troubled expression because she started blurting out reasons to justify herself.
"Because you're like... Way better than I am at this you know? Like you actually know the recipes and don't need to spend thirty minutes to try and read Ethan's instructions. And you won't always be available to help me." I smiled at her and she paused her rambling. "I get it. But I'm not ready yet. It still feels too much like Ethan's world for me to take over it." Ben nodded.
"But I promise that I will. Eventually. And you know that you can stop whenever you want to." Ben opened her mouth to answer, however, before she could, the same soldier from this morning burst into the tent.
"Hey, have you seen- Oh good! Here you are Chief! We need you right now at the camp's entrance." I got up immediately.
"On my way." I hurried to the sink and washed the dye off of my hands.
I nodded goodbye at Ben and rushed to the camp's entrance.
Well, we called it the entrance. It was more of the only place that was tent-free and that led to the outside of the camp.
"What's going on?"
"You'll see once we get there." I raised a brow at the soldier's commanding tone but said nothing.
Did everyone hate me here?
As we neared the camp's entrance, I immediately noticed what was the problem.
A large flock of enemies were in front of the camp, seemingly waiting. Our soldiers had their guns pointed at them, but they weren't shooting. Good. Better not to shoot when we're so close to the camp.
I looked around for Nate or Cry, but they weren't there.
Actually, I noticed that neither the pink nor green team was there. There was only team purple and blue.
"Someone report."
"Here Chief!" I looked at my right and noticed Felix. I smiled at them but they didn't smile back.
And I honestly couldn't tell if it was because of the whole enemies thing or the whole Cry thing. Better not to ask.
Felix looked too serious, it didn't suit them. "They just arrived here. They claim to be unarmed but we didn't send someone to check because we deemed it unsafe. Also we were waiting on you."
"Where are Nate and Cry?" Felix looked down at the mention of Cry. "We don't know. We haven't heard anything from them since they've been gone. Nothing from the pink or green team either." I hummed distractedly.
From the looks of it, we could potentially protect ourselves from them if it came down to it. After all, our soldiers were well-trained.
But if what Cry had said was true, then that meant that there were way more enemies waiting out there.
Fuck. We really were in a shitty situation.
"Mark? Mark! I can't believe it's you!" I looked around myself, searching for where the -weirdly familiar- voice came from.
And then I noticed him. One of the enemies had moved forward and was looking at me, smiling.
Our soldiers were looking between me and him, obviously confused.
The enemy took off his helmet and it clicked.
"Tyler!" I stepped forward, moving past our row soldiers that still had their guns drawn before engulfing him in a hug. We were both laughing.
Fucking Tyler. I had completely forgotten about him in the midst of everything.
God, I was so glad that those bombs hadn't killed him.
"Fucking hell Mark, I'm so glad you're okay!" Tyler patted me on the back and I smiled at him fondly. "The feeling's mutual."
"I had a hard time recognizing you what with the red hair and all."
"Same with you. I thought you'd never drop the buzz cut." Tyler shrugged and I heard a cough behind me.
Oh. Right.
I turned around.
Everyone was looking at me in various degrees of shock. Some were also glaring at me.
Well, makes you wonder who your real friends are.
"Wait here a sec."
"Don't worry about it." I left Tyler and walked back to my soldiers.
The row of armed soldiers reluctantly let me pass, though some were intensely glaring at me. Felix was also one of those glaring at me.
Fuck, first Cry and now Felix? Did anyone here still like me? Damn.
"Hey, I used to be those people's Chief. Of course I know them." A few people nodded but most still didn't trust me.
"This guy used to be my best friend. We used to share a cell back when I was still in prison." Some people raised their brows. Oh right. "They used to capture people who had, had had or were suspected of having colored hair. I was one of those people."
I turned back towards Tyler. "I trust Tyler here with my life."
"That doesn't mean he's good." I tried to find the person that had spoken, but couldn't. "Believe it or not, but most of us that joined the ACH were forced to. Not everyone is bigoted asshole." People were unimpressed. They didn't trust me at all.
They would've trusted Ethan.
"How many of us has he killed." I was almost tempted to say that I also had indirectly killed many of our soldiers, but it wouldn't have helped my case.
"And how many people that were basically shredded of their identities and enslaved have we killed? The ACH was first formed as a way to help colored-haired people 'repent'. Only few army majors or policemen joined." That argument seemed to have worked.
Finally, I was making some progress.
"He's still not welcomed here." I noticed who was talking this time.
It was Bob, one of our sharp shooter. Really nice guy all around and one of the best in team purple. But it was no secret that he really really hated the ACH and all of its soldiers. Including me.
But I thought that we had moved past that. Apparently not.
"Look, Bob. Give Tyler a chance. He really is a nice guy." Bob seemed to be considering it.
"Even if we accept him, what about the rest of them? We can't just allow all of them to stay. Even if we did trust them, we don't have enough food for all of them." That had been another soldier.
I didn't know their name but I vaguely remembered seeing them guarding my tent the first few days I'd been here. Though their hair had been green back then, they now were blue.
"We could help with that." I sharply turned around at Tyler's voice. He hadn't moved from his spot, thankfully.
Had we really been so loud that he heard us from all the way over there?
I nodded at him to continue. After all, who was better than him to defend his team?
Well, as Chief I probably was. But as ex-leader of the ACH, I really wasn't.
"My team and I were on ground in town while the explosions happened. Once we understood what had happened, we all agreed on taking our chance and joining the rebellion. Just as Mark said, most of us joined the ACH because it was either that or dying anyways. And now with most of the authorities gone..."
Bob walked towards Tyler, but stayed behind the row of soldiers that still had their guns pointed at Tyler or his soldiers.
Bob too had his gun tightly held in his hand. That alone was enough for me to feel wary. But the expression on his face was also a good giveaway that he was ready to blast Tyler's head off of his shoulders.
Fun!
"Great story. Very tear-jerking. Love it. What's the real one." Tyler frowned. "It is the real one. We only want to help."
"And do you really believe that me or anyone here would trust you in the battlefield? Who's to say that you wouldn't confuse who's team's side you're on?"
Tyler shot me a smile. "Mark would." I shot him an alarmed look and he burst out laughing.
Fuck Tyler, not the time for that.
"No but more seriously, I don't expect you or anyone to. As I said, we wee in town when the bombs were detonated. There's a reason for that." Tyler's knowing smile was annoying even me.
So I couldn't really blame Bob for getting angry at Tyler. "Spit it out!" Tyler raised his hands in surrender but didn't drop the smile.
"We were the ones responsible of kitchen duty. And also cleaning duty. Depended on the week." Bob squinted his eyes before turning back towards me.
"We do need cooks. And if the people in town know them then they could get us some food easily." The same blue-haired soldier from earlier spoke up and I was glad that it was to defend Tyler this time.
"What's to say they're telling the truth." Bob said back and I opened my mouth to answer. I knew for a fact that that was true.
"And even if we had a way of proving what they're saying," Bob said, completely ignoring me, "who would trust them with our food? They could poison us. If you think about it, it's one of the most effective way to get rid of all of us in one go."
Bob had a point. But I trusted Tyler.
I knew Tyler.
He was one of the sweetest and most positive guy ever. And he had helped me countless times.
Tyler looked back at me with a smile, as if saying 'I'm done, your turn'. Great.
"I could test their food. I trust Tyler." Bob looked at me and then back at Tyler.
"Fuck man did you two date or something?" Tyler's laugh echoed in my ears and I felt myself flush, mortified at the thought. "God no! We just go way back!"
"What, am I not good enough for you Mark?" I shot a glare at Tyler who just laughed harder. A few people were chuckling but what surprised me the most was to see Bob laugh.
Wow. I guess he had warmed up to Tyler after all if he was laughing at his shitty humor.
"Ok, I'll give you a chance." I stared wide-eyed at Bob but he wasn't looking at me.
"Oh-kay... So. By a show of hands, who's okay with them staying?" A majority of hands raised up and I sighed in relief.
I guess seeing Bob, one of the most ACH-hating soldier agree to them staying was enough to change the mind of most people who were still reluctant.
"Alright then, that's settled. Soldiers, lower your weapons and let them pass. Tyler, let your soldiers come through one by one, we will still search them for weapons. I think you can understand that." Tyler nodded at me. "Sure thing Mark."
It seemed that for once everything had gone ok. Let's just hope it would stay that way.
A/N :
Fun fact, ACH is pronounced like the word ache, but it's okay to say A-C-H separately, it's just longer
