Thunder Valley
Mina Carolina
Mina quietly fastened her 3DMG back onto her body, shifting and looping belts across her chest and waist. The familiar weight of the boxy contraption settled by her side and she sighed as she buckled in the last strap, her fingers carefully edging across the seams to make sure they weren't twisted. As a trainee she was used to putting on the 3DMG quickly and efficiently, belts that were utterly useless to her were cut off while she cut corners and was able to complete two belts in seconds of each other. Just habits you pick up, she guessed, even the best had their quirks.
But she couldn't help but let her usual time lengthen by just a bit, past what instructor Shadis would call acceptable, as she watched the foreigner on the other end of the cave. He had finished bandaging up the trainees who were injured, each giving him a nod of thanks as the pieces of cloth rested snugly against their wounds, then he began checking his weapon. She realised, like her own quirks, North had his own supply of tricks for his own checkup.
His hand would ghost around his odd musket, feeling every nook and cranny for anything out of place before he slowly dropped his hand back onto the butt of the weapon and clicked a button. The back end popped up, the slide falling down as he caught it and set it gently onto a table. Then his fingers reached down into the piece and she watched as he would glide through the rifle, pulling out pins to further disassemble it and cleaning off pieces of dirt that had somehow lodged themselves into the intricate mechanisms that allowed the weapon (which she didn't know was a replica) to fire it's payload of ammunition.
North himself was also a bit of a mystery to Mina. He had sandy blonde hair, a type of color she had never seen, and his eyes were a dazzling sparkle of blue. His jawline was chiseled, his cheekbones were squared across his face, and his eyebrows were thin but big enough that you could see it beneath his fringe. Her father once joke how, if there were humans living outside the walls, they would look like cavemen dressed in rags as they were robbed of advancement by Titans. Looking at North now though she realised that her father couldn't be further from the truth. They were tall, strong and intelligent, and in Mina's mind North seemed to have embodied this representation.
"He might catch you staring." Hannah whispered into her ear. To her dismay Mina felt her face heat up from being noticed at all and she bit the bottom of her lip in agitation. She glanced back at North, the marine was shifting the gauntlets on his arm and patting his unarmored chest. The blush deepened as Hannah elbowed her side and she couldn't help the hiss that escaped her lips.
"He might catch you whispering!" Hannah giggled and walked away towards where a group of trainees were neatly stacking all their acquired supplies and sorting them into rucksacks. Mina stared at her retreating form, a look of dismay on her face as her sister-in-arms left. Annie strode into her view, the much taller blonde haired girl tossing Mina a raised eyebrow. She strained a smile before she gestured her head to North. Immediately Annie narrowed her eyes in suspicion and...anger? Confusion? Mina wasn't sure but by the time she sorted out her thoughts Annie was already gone, nowhere to be seen.
Mina searched a little bit more for her before giving up and buckling the last strap of her 3DMG. As if on cue Marco called everyone to the mouth of the cave and explained how they were going to head to the center of the valley. He separated everyone into groups, the ones without 3DMG into fives while the ones who had it were paired in twos. Mina was paired with Aleit, a nice girl who had brown hair pulled up into a high ponytail.
After the briefing the trainees quietly filed out of the cave, North ghosting their edges as he swung his strange rifle left and right. Mina burst into the air, her 3DMG launching razor sharp tethers through the air and reeling her high above the sky. For a moment Mina thought about using one of the UNSC's gears, the ones without wires and using fire to launch them in the air. She found it difficult to imagine, using something like that as opposed to her 3DMG. But she also wondered just how different it would be.
She thought she might like it. But her thoughts ended abruptly when she heard a sharp whistle pitch in the air. She glanced down and saw Marco fling his arm to their right. He raised his fingers to his eye then edged them to his wrist. The translation was simple, Go right and check it out but make it fast.
She nodded her head and with a quick relay to Aleit the two females were already reorienting themselves to face the intended direction, releasing their tethers accurately. Mina weaved in and out of the trees, careful to not expunge too much gas as she narrowly avoided any trees in her way. When given the chance she would disconnect her tethers, launching herself forward to eat up a few metres of distance before launching another tether before she lost too much altitude. It was a method that was engineered sometime after they met the UNSC, a way to travel larger distances without using too much fuel or relying too much on their wires. Mina thought it was just a way for the Wallers to try and keep an edge against the UNSC, which she knew they lacked.
She twisted herself around a tree, her wire wrapping itself around the tree and causing her to land perpendicular against the tree's body. Aleit landed just by her side and together they discovered why Marco had ordered them to travel this far out.
In front of them was what remained of a battle, more like a massacre perhaps. Several bodies were laid out on the floor, their frames smeared in red paint. From as far as she could tell they were UNSC marines, their uniforms a mix of fully armored to just cloth protecting their bodies. Mina counted five at least, but that didn't discount the devastation of the area around them. Several trees had streaks chipped onto their surface, large splashes of red were scattered across the area and the ground was trampled, she suddenly realised that battle had a lot more people than these five casualties.
She signaled Aleit to keep her eyes open and when she got a nod of acceptance she quickly repelled down towards the ground. Her feet skidded against the dirt and she noticed how none of the wounded marines responded to her movement. She carefully dropped to a knee next to one marine and turned him over on his side, frowning as his head lolled to the side and eyes blank and cloudy. "He's knocked out." She muttered. A quick scan of her eyes showed that they too were unconscious. "That paint must really pack a punch."
She felt his neck for a pulse and breathed a sigh for relief when she felt it. Pushing herself back to her feet she quickly headed back to Aleit and gave her signs to report to Marco. She nodded an affirmative before disappearing back into the forest. After Aleit was gone Mina went back to the marine and carefully, though with a grunt of effort, she propped him up against a tree. Gently she tried to shake him awake.
"Ugh...I feel drunk..." Mina didn't recognise the words so it was safe to say that it wasn't from her own natural tongue. Biting her lower lip she glanced by her sides, feeling as though she was being watched, before reaching down and slapping the marine hard across the face.
He sputtered and spit, eyes swirling in his sockets as he coughed. He blinked, once then twice before he reached forward to grab onto Mina's shoulder. She restrained a yelp from the vice-like grip he was using. "It hurts...like hell." He muttered before he sagged back into the tree. "You're a Waller, right?" He asked.
Mina nodded her head and she caught him chuckle, "North is with us." She supplied, it would do him good to know that at least one of his comrades was okay.
"North?" He said tentatively, "hell Benito was raising a shit storm trying to find him. Never saw a fucking mute who could mimic shouting from his fingers alone." He shook his head before weakly pointing his hand east. "That's where everyone ran to after I went down, at least as far as I remember. It's where the cliffs are, we also picked up a few of your friends along the way, a girl named Sasha and a guy named Connie."
A piece of her heart felt relieved in knowing that her formerly missing friends were ok and nodded her head in thanks. "Will you be okay on your own?"
"Just leave, the instructors are probably backtracking to make sure we're okay anyways." With one final thanks Mina launched her wires and returned back to the group.
By the time she rejoined them Aleit had already explained what they found with Mina adding on what the marine had said. "The cliffs?" Marco frowned, "there's no way around there." He clicked his tongue as he tried to understand the situation faster. But Jean beat him to the punch.
"We can't risk it," He urged, "the instructors are probably going after them. We should use this time to head to the center of the valley." His argument was met with heated disapproval from Eren, who refused to leave Sasha and Connie behind.
"It's just a training exercise." Jean retorted, "There's no reason to get bent out of shape."
"Regardless," a calm smooth voice speared through the group, "I know my brothers and sisters. The fact that they only lost five guys is testament to how well trained they are. You don't get top ranks in the Academy through nothing, they can probably hold their own." Jean jumped when he realised North had snuck up next to him, the marine grinning at their sudden shock expressions of how quietly he had entered their meeting. "Surprise? Fighting isn't always about who makes the bigger noise you know."
"Anyways," Marco interjected, "what's your point North?"
"We don't have the ability to help them, even with numbers, the instructors would have obviously familiarized themselves with the forest. They have the advantage of skill and experience, both yours and ours. We'll only slow them down if we try to help them."
"So you want us to run away like cowards?" Eren yelled.
"No," North said coldly, "I want you to act like a soldier. Being a soldier isn't just about being heroes and saviors; men borne from fire and willing to dive back in for any petty reason. We win battles, and in doing so we wish to win a war. A lost battle damages morale, it relieves the country of good men that could have survived and can muster discontent in their own holdings. The fighting men and women may have accepted death but their families aren't always so willing. One day Waller you might find yourself fighting me, and killing humans rather than Titans. It will not be your place to question any order to kill me. You are a soldier, you obey orders and when needed you make your own with the logical intention to save as many people as you can." North stood there, eyes gleaming hard into Eren's before he added finally, "Cowardice is just a useless propaganda phrase to keep simple men on the frontlines and remove their choice of retreat through social conduct."
Eren seemed shocked by his words, the feeling rippling through, "Don't you even feel a shred of shame or guilt? Those are your friends too!"
North smirked, "I'm a soldier, a soldier born in a generation after whole cities were burned to the ground and our enemies were not titans. They were intelligent creatures that knew how to hunt their prey. Thousands of our people died in every town, triple that for our armed forces. You were sitting pretty with these walls, we had no such defense when they stormed us. Shame? My people had to do a lot of things to stay alive. But we'd never leave a man behind unless we know he's coming back." Mina tried to move forward to break these two apart, no physical blows were exchanged and it didn't seem like North's words were even phasing Eren. But she was beaten to the punch when Mikasa grabbed the other end of Eren's collar and dragged him away from the group.
"He-hey Mikasa stop it!" He shouted, clearly embarrassed. North stared at his retreating back dubiously, eyebrows raised in question at Marco.
"Mikasa is..., well, I guess she's his half-sister." North casually nodded his head in understanding, and Mina was struck and how easily he accepted the information.
"Well, moving on, Benito is more than capable of keeping them alive and well. I don't think we have to worry about them. Perhaps, however it would be stupid to believe that all the instructors are chasing after them. We'll probably still face opposition." Marco nodded his head, his thumb resting against his chin in thought.
"What do you think Jean?" Marco asked.
"I think we should try and avoid them as best we could. We can barely deal with them after all." He gestured to the few 3DMG trainees above their heads and the muskets in their hands.
"Maybe," North said, "Mina did you see any weapons where the marines were?" He asked. She thought about it, she had honestly seen some but they were scattered and some were splattered with red paint.
"A few. But they didn't look like they were in prime condition."
"What type of terrain do we have around us?" North asked.
This time Aleit stepped forward to speak, "There's a clearing to our left that cuts off into a cavern, to our right is just forests and shrubbery nothing to note there."
"Wait," Marco cut off, "There's a river on that side and it cuts straight through the forests. It doesn't hit the center but if we can draw the instructors out and then funnel them through the river we could ambush them there."
"Or we could we try to pincer them, make them take two fronts rather than just one." Reiner interjected. Marco nodded his head, his freckled face now shining in excitement.
Mina smiled, a plan was forming together and she liked it. She glanced at North to see how he was feeling and grew confused at the grimace on his face. Her confusion died to understanding when she saw him glance back into the forest where she came from, his eyes slightly obscured by his fringe. She slowly eased herself by his side, not fast enough that it would surprise him but slow enough that she didn't get everyone else's attention. "You're worried about your friends." She accused him quietly, in a whisper meant only for him.
"A hypocrite knows when he's caught." North said thinly. She didn't find the joke funny but for his sake she smiled.
"I don't think you're a hypocrite." And that was the truth, "You were just saying what needed to be said." Though she didn't agree on the words, she knew they were not for her and could bury the meaning behind them to the back of her head. It wasn't her business after all.
"Yea well, sometimes people just have to say what's on their mind. Even if some of them isn't what they want to be said." North shrugged and she knew he was talking about that brief lapse in concentration that he pulled up his people's past. It astounded her why they wanted to keep it a secret but if what North said was true, they barely scratched the surface.
Just how far apart were these they compared to them, Mina thought, but they're human there's no doubt about that.
Wall Rose
ODST Corp
Staff Sergeant James Riker
Riker spun, his head clear of thoughts, his eyes blank and closed. He felt free in the air, for just a small moment, and he imagined the wind hitting his unarmored form. How nice it would feel, then he went tumbling back down, arms outstretched and his Saturi's laid waste to all of that stood below him. Hot lead spewed free, ripping muscle and tendon apart, legs bent to provide a smaller frame as he rocketed towards the ground. His HUD shined a shrill warning, he was closing the ground fast. In a blink Riker had reoriented himself and blasted off back into the trees.
He twisted around a tree, using his jetpack to slow his velocity, before he climbed back up to the sky just as a Titan was trying to snatch him out of the air. He climbed and climbed, before he turned off his jetpack and fell down to the ground. The Titan still had its arms outstretched and was wholly unprepared when Riker reignited his jetpack behind him and destroyed the nape of its neck with twin fire. The recoil launched the ODST back, his feet rounding about to press against another Titans forehead. Her boots dug into the soft flesh underneath and before the monster could even think about slapping Riker off its face, the Staff Sergeant unloaded HE rounds into its face, disfiguring its already hideous face.
With a growl and hiss Riker was climbing back up into the air before roughly landing onto a tree trunk. He exchanged magazines, placed his Saturi's safety on and sheathed them by his sides. Cracking his shoulder blade the ODST lifted a rocket launcher off his back and aimed it to where a cluster of titans were congregating. He was about the press the trigger but stopped when he saw a green blur slice its way through the throng of titans. It sheared off their necks before appearing just above the new mass grave.
"Levi." Riker muttered to himself. The man was good, fast and strong. Riker was sure he would have made a good ODST. But that was a mute point.
The 'Captain of the troops' glared at Riker indiscriminately from his position and the Staff Sergeant met his challenge with a gesture to his rocket launcher. They stayed silently staring for a while more, the sounds of fighting going on around them, before Levi bursts back into the gray with his tethers launching. "Territorial dude, ain't he." Riker muttered.
"He's a soldier that follows orders. That's more than enough." Chris landed next to Riker, the captain ejecting a spent clip from his MA5B. "That lieutenant Gary is moving his troops out of the base. Professor Anders have them going on the hunt for answers."
Riker snorted, "I thought we were here for that." The staff sergeant checked his BIOCOM to see one of his ODSTs suddenly going red.
"Change of plans. When the Survey Corp were going through our base to set up another FOB, Captain Cutter wanted to extend a helping hand while the marine trainees are on their joint training mission." Chris intoned, ducking to a knee as he pulled his sniper from his back.
"The 'let's all get along squad?' Yea I heard. Riley's kid is on the team. Benito, I think. They're all Academy top rankers, good boys and girls," Riker muttered, "I don't think it's fair for the trainees to be overshadowed by them."
"The marine instructors are there too, and they have orders to specifically target those recruits." Riker winced, silently taking back what he said. A Survey Corp member whizzed by the two ODSTs, that old-looking dude Auruo , and Riker caught the small sneer in his face. The staff sergeant chuckled, knowing the kid was just angry at having to have sit still on a bed for a week due to his leg injury from Chris.
"You should have shot his head off." Riker joked, but had to admit he had some skill with the blade. He wrapped his wire around a titans neck, constricting the beast and giving him a clear shot to its neck. Clean and precise. Riker thought his ODSTs could do better.
He was about to make another joke when he felt a small pat on his shoulder pauldron. The sergeant only blinked once, the confusion at the feeling disappearing as he realised what the motion was. It was an old signal that Chris used to make while the both of them was fighting on Arcadia. They were so ragged and worn out, talking just couldn't be achieved anymore, so Chris would always make several taps on their armors, signalling to him different odd messages. But that was a bygone era, Chris had never done that in years and the sudden sensation pulled Riker back into memories.
He remembered running through Arcadia, his boots soaked in the blood and gore of human remains scattered throughout the ground. His M7S shooting down grunts, jackals, elites and the like without pause. Explosions, fire, smoke, then he felt the familiar presence by his side. The smell cherry and rough scandinavian voice cutting through TEAMCOM. He quickly shook himself awake and turned to Chris, in the here and now, and was thankful for his helmet.
"You were thinking about Arcadia." Chris deduced. Damn the helmet didn't even do a thing.
"Yea I have. Haven't you heard of PTSD? You don't do shit like that unless you want a veteran to get a panic attack." Riker retorted, defenses pulling up all around him. He hated this about Chris, always prodding and psychoanalysing, keeping his men centered but not giving a damn about privacy.
"These people aren't going to be able to do us much harm Riker." Chris said. "Or are you wondering what Judy might say if she saw them?" Riker suddenly clenched his fist on his rifles grip and it was only through years of intense training that he didn't ring Chris over the head and even without Riker would have still held back, he respected Chris far too much it seems.
"You don't know her." Riker hissed. "You didn't spend your whole life with her, even at the end."
Chris was silent for a moment, not moving or speaking. Then without warning he raised his rifle and fired a round. Riker followed it, unavoidably missing its flight, but saw the bullet tear its way through two titans neck, ravaging them from the inside out before exploding and ripping a head completely free from a titans body. Riker wondered why Chris chose to break his impromptu therapy session over something as mute as this, then he saw a green blur with brunette hair appear just above the fringe of a titan, a shocked expression on her face as she witnessed the carnage in near point blank range.
"You're right," Chris said out loud, "But you did, so think about that." The captain instructed before walking up next to Riker and saying the coldest words he had ever heard, "You're not your own man anyways." Fire ignited from Chris' pack and the ODST launched into the air.
Rikee bristled, "A therapist and a broody instructor. Is there something you cannot do Chris." The staff sergeant took off on a dead run before igniting his jetpack, his left arm extending outwards and feet coiled beneath him, he sent bullets shearing off titan limbs with one hand while the other delivered death. And as Riker fought, his mind never left the words that were spoken.
Next chapter will end the Training mission Arc ( or the filler arc, as somebody coined it.) Again, I'm writing on the phone so any mistakes pointed out is greatly appreciated. On another is the whole culture shock thing doing ok? Becuz I wrote this chapter five times, all of them bounced off different characters as they got used to the UNSC. But it felt too rushed for me so i kept changing till I stuck with Mina's POV who I think deserves more char development.
Also, really I don't have a monopoly on this idea. If someone wishes to use the setting of the story with some changes, like instead of SoF you use Pillar of Autumn. As opposed to UNSC you use a splinter covenant group, maybe mostly Jackals and grunts. Because really elites and brutes are overused. Go ahead, I encourage it. I want more fics, I want more diversity. Go do it.