Chris awoke with the worst headache he'd ever felt in his life, like someone hitting him with a sledgehammer directly in the face. He also felt like the world around him was spinning faster than he could keep up with. He looked around with his one good eye to see that he was still inside the tank while his comrades seemed to be outside from the voices he heard outside of the tank.

"Leave me in here with a fucked up eye, I don't care," Chris said to himself sarcastically as he slowly and carefully stood from his seat and began making his way towards the main hatch atop the tank. When he opened the hatch, he was instantly greeted by the blinding light of the morning sun and the cold crisp air it brought with it. He placed a hand over his eye as he began climbing out of the tank while taking measures to not slip and fall off it. Near the tank at a small makeshift camp sat Dallas and Grace as they cooked a small breakfast from their reserve of food and what they scavenged from the forest around them. Grace was the first to notice Chris climbing out of the tank and the first to speak to him.

"Chris, thank goodness you're awake. Velvet was worried and thought you died while Dallas called dibs on that revolver you picked up last night," Grace said with a laugh while Velvet turned bright red from embarrassment. Chris just laughed as he made his way over to Velvet and sat next to her at the small camp with the others. Although Chris's headache and dizziness hadn't ceased, he refused to show it to the rest of the team that. It was bad enough that he made Velvet worry that he died when he passed out from the morphine injections Grace gave him. But it seemed that something was clearly bothering Grace as she sat silently and kept to herself.

"Grace, you alright?" Chris asked after a few moments of silence, Grace becoming surprised for second from the random question before answering.

"If I hadn't gone out there during the shooting, you wouldn't have given your position away and made the tank come closer to pick me up. That White Fang soldier wouldn't have had a clear shot through the driver's window to shoot you," Grace said quietly as she looked to the ground in shame. But unexpected to her, Chris didn't seem at all mad when he spoke to her once more.

"Everyone's gonna walk away from this war with scars, some physical and some mental, and it's inevitable. But you made it out of there with ammo for Dallas to push the White Fang back away from the tank. If that guy was any closer to the window when he shot, I wouldn't be here and my brains would be splattered all over the inside of that tank," Chris said as he gestured to his eye and then the tank while he spoke, Dallas and Velvet nodding their heads in agreement to Chris's words. Grace couldn't help but smile at how he harbored no ill feelings towards her from last night's massive shootout. But her smile soon disappeared when a thought came to mind: the mission.

"So what do we do now? We're four soldiers in an entire land that wants to either kill us or is too scared that the White Fang will kill them if they help us," Grace said as she looked around the group as she spoke.

"We do what they sent us here for and I intend on finding the ones responsible for attacking Vale and Beacon-" Chris spoke before suddenly stopping, everyone around him going silent as well. As Chris was speaking, the sound of leaves rustling and a twig breaking was heard over his voice. This meant that something, or someone, was very close to their position. Grace and Velvet sat motionless while Chris slowly stood from where he was sitting next to Velvet and drew his revolver. He then gestured for Dallas to follow him into the rural area around the tank and camp, Dallas drawing a knife before following the man. With every step the two men took, they could swear they heard what sounded like heavy breath and groaning.

"Ugh...we've been walking all night, Ren! Can't we stop for a few minutes...or hours," a female's voice said, making Dallas and Chris stop dead in their tracks.

"Nora's right, we need to stop or else Ruby's gonna pass out," another voice said before Chris turned to Dallas and gestured for him to circle around the sources of the voices.

"I'm not gonna pass out! You're gonna pass out, Jaune!" another female voice said in what sounded like a mix of breathless gasps and deliriousness. Dallas was already circling around the other side of the unknown voices while Chris slowly began edging forward to see for himself who the voices belonged to. After getting behind what he assumed was cover that they couldn't see him he finally was able to get a clear view of the unknown persons. Almost instantly, Chris recognized the four teens standing in the middle of the forest bickering to one another about rest. He knew who they were from watching the tournament that took place only hours before the massive attack and confusion.

Ruby, Jaune, Ren, and Nora.

Chris was just about to stand when he accidentally stepped on a fallen branch, the four teens suddenly becoming alert and drawing their weapons. Chris instantly found himself ducking back down behind cover while the four teens began scanning the woods for what caused the sound.

"I know for a fact I heard something that time," Jaune said as he slowly began moving from his friends and directly towards Chris's hiding spot. But Chris was unaware of this as he was checking his revolver to make sure it was loaded in case the four had spotted him and attacked. Just before Chris could see where the four teens where, he felt the cold steel of a sword to his throat. But it wasn't Jaune that had found him...

"The name's Maverick, and I'd advise you not to move," a young man's voice said as Chris slowly stood from his hiding spot to reveal himself to the teens and the mysterious stranger holding a blade to throat.

Noctis Caelum Lucis - Maverick Zachery