Bookfisher: Wohoo! The FT 17! all the other tanks of ww1 were just rolling upside down tubs with guns sticking out , the FT 17 was a real tank-That's exactly why I choose this tank, as it fits the time period but is also sort of futuristic for the time period.
Pendragon134: Love this fic, I do hope you update soon-I'm moving to Japan soon so updates will be slow until things settle.
Also as a side note, to make things a bit more realistic, when ever someone's name is spoken out loud it will more than likely be their last name as this is what the military does, but when it comes to internally talking about someone it will be their first name. (Example: Jaune looked over to Ruby and called her over. "Sergeant Rose come over here.") Make any sense? Good.
(Disclaimer: I do not own RWBY)
The Soldier's Battleground
ザー・ソールジュズ・バタルフィールド
Chapter XI: United We Stand
"Hello everyone, my name is Lieutenant Jaune Arc. I will be your commanding officer in a new type of specialized unit that will be hitting the battlefield with experimental weaponry."
Everyone all had different looks of emotions crossing their faces ranging from anticipation to skepticism, all the way to disdain.
'Oh, I wonder what's got their knickers in a bind.' Jaune noticed a group of soldiers with slight disgust and disdain on their faces and decided to ask rather than wonder endlessly on what they were thinking.
"What's wrong soldier? I know this job will be highly dangerous, but why the look of contempt?" A sneer appeared on the face of a rather tall soldier as he pointed a finger towards a bunny Faunus in the group of soldiers.
"Why the hell do we have to work with that thing? If this is such a dangerous job, then she has no place here." Another young woman who was standing beside the Faunus girl took an aggressive step forward after hearing the insult thrown out by the tall soldier.
"You take that back!" She was about to take another step forward until a small hand gently grabbed her arm, stopping her. "I-it's okay Coco, you don't need to step in for me." A small meek voice was heard from the timid bunny girl as she told her friend to stand down. "But Velvet he…"
"I don't care whether you're a human or Faunus. Every single one of you has been handpicked for your abilities and past accomplishments in the field. You are all Atlesian soldiers who are fighting to protect this country from the invading Imperial military. If any one of you have a problem fighting alongside each other, than I can sign your transfer papers and you will be moved to another unit without any consequences on your record." Jaune leveled a challenging gaze towards the hot-blooded soldier. "I would hate to think that I misjudged your abilities."
The tall soldier grunted as he fell back into place in the group. Jaune internally grinned at the action but he knew that this was not the end of the issue. He would keep an eye out on him and make a sound decision from there if he truly needed the soldier's abilities. Nothing could get you killed quicker if the person next to you didn't want to work with you in a battle.
Still seeing as how his squad consisted of more than a few Faunus, he hoped that nothing drastic had to be done to keep the peace. Jaune wanted a platoon of soldiers, not a group of children bickering amongst themselves. He pushed the subject to the back of his mind for the time being.
"Right, well as I was saying previously, you all have been chosen to test and field different weapons to see how they perform on the battlefield. If the results come back positive, then they may be issued to the rest of the military for further use. With that said there a few people here that you all should be aware of as they will watching your back in the ensuing fights to come." He gestured at the younger woman earlier who had stepped in for the bunny Faunus.
"This is Lieutenant Coco Adel, she will be in charge of providing and directing the tank platoon corps. Some soldiers under her command are Velvet Scarlatina, Fox Alistair, Yatsuhashi Daichi and Penelope Polendina." They all raised their hands as he called out their names. He continued on.
"Corporal Lie Ren is the lead squad medic, alongside Humphrey Banning and Haley Danso as well." The three men nodded.
Corporal Nora Valkyrie is apart of the explosives squad and will work alongside the tank corps to remove any obstacles or hindrances in our way. Wendy Cheslock, Rudolph Drake and Elianora Dupont are a part of this group as well." Nora who was fiddling with a grenade stopped long enough to wave before going back to her tinkering. Some people around her cautiously took a step away from her.
'Breaking news, new platoon is formed only to die in briefing because of tampering with a live grenade…' Jaune internally sighed at what his subordinate was doing but decided it was best to leave her alone. He coughed lightly before continuing.
"Sergeants, Yang Xiao Long and Lynn O'Hara are experts when it comes to close quarter combat, I know many of you are no stranger to war, but sharing knowledge and experience is helpful to everyone." Yang cracked her knuckles and gave a challenging look around her as if asking for someone to test how skilled she was at fighting. No one meet her gaze.
"Sergeant Blake Belladonna and Corporal Sun Wukong are part of our advanced scout squads and Sergeant Ruby Rose is the lead sniper from our Marksmen squad. He clapped his hands together lightly. "Right, now with all that said could you please focus your attention to the board. Even though we've just been formed, Command is impatient and has already given us our first set of orders." Some muffled sighs could be heard coming from the group of soldiers as every single one of them were no strangers to plans created and executed last minute.
"Stop your belly aching, I know the what your all thinking right now, but we have our orders. Say hello to Hill 416, this pill of mud currently overlooks a wide angle of our allied lines and is capable of directing enemy artillery due to its elevated height. Intel suggests it's only lightly manned due to its status as an observatory rather than a defensive position as there are more than a few lines of enemy trenches between it and the frontlines." He gestured over to Coco and her crew.
"Lieutenant Adel will be leading the first phase of the assault with the Mark IV tanks and soften up any hardened enemy positions. Corporal Valkyrie, your squad will be going in and causing havoc in the enemy trenches with grenades, our main objective is not to capture the trenches as reinforcements will do that, but get past them and hit the hill behind. The rest of us will be providing support for the tanks so they won't be overrun and watching the backs of the grenadiers while they clear the area in front of us. This will be a major assault so on the off chance things don't go according to plan, rendezvous up with the tanks as best you can and retreat to friendly lines."
"We will be testing out the capabilities of the tank and its role in the infantry, and will also be testing out a new weapon developed quite recently. It's called a sub machine gun, designation MP-15, it has the capability of a machine gun but is able to be carried by a single person and fires small caliber rounds. Quite useful for close quarter combat which is what we will be engaging in. Unfortunately, we didn't receive enough to outfit everyone so we will also still be carrying some rifles into combat. After this battle we will be giving feedback and what could be improved or added to this weapon. With that said, Sergeant Belladonna has been briefed on the operation of the weapon and will teach you the basics of how the gun works. That's all from me, we move out in a few hours, I suggest you take this time to familiarize yourself with the equipment around you."
The group gathered in front of Jaune dispersed and a good amount of them started to talk to Blake about the new weapon.
"Well guess I should clean my rifle while I have the time." He sat down and started to clean.
A hail of bullets whizzed by Jaune as he heaved himself out of the protection of his trench and once again set foot in the muddy ground known as 'No Man's Land'. Raising his rifle to his shoulder he fired off a round before looking to the soldiers beside him who had followed him out of the trench.
"Take cover behind the tanks and push forward!" Not wanting to get shot and appreciating the cover, the soldiers around him lined up behind the lumbering metal beasts and slowly moved forward towards the Imperial lines. Occasionally one of them would lean out and fire their weapon before taking cover once again. Using this method of fighting, the Atelsians steadily made their way forward relatively safe from enemy gunfire. Of course the tanks only offered so much protection and a few causalities happened along the way.
Jaune racked the bolt forward on his rifle as he leaned out to fire his rifle. His shot was interrupted when a bullet grazed his upper arm and he hissed from the stinging pain it caused. Shaking off the injury, he took out another Imperial soldier as he walked towards the enemy lines. A machine gun opened fire and sprayed the area around Jaune forcing him to take cover from the blistering fire. A few of those rounds ricocheted off the side of the tank before moving on to other targets. He took that time to lean out and figure out where the fire had come from and located the machine gun nest spewing out its bullets towards the advancing Atlesian soldiers.
"Corporal Valkyrie on me! Target is thirty yards ahead of us to the right behind a small embankment of sandbags."
"On it boss!" Nora pulled the pin and prepared to throw the grenade.
"Cover fire!" Jaune and a few other soldiers opened fire on the machine gun nest. Nora drew her arm back before lobbing the small explosive into the air. It exploded a few seconds later destroying the gun emplacement. Seeing the result, Jaune heaved a mental sigh of relief before refocusing on the task at hand.
"We're approaching the enemy trenches, everyone prepare yourself!" Jaune shouldered his rifle and fired before turning towards a certain spunky female.
"Grenades out!" Nora grinned at the order and started to lob grenades into the Imperial trenches. The ensuing explosions and the screams of pain resonated in Jaune's mind, but he pushed the guilt aside as he jumped down into the enemy trenches. A severely wounded enemy soldier struggled to raise their weapon towards Jaune, but he shot them before moving on.
Seeing as how many of the Imperial soldiers were either killed or wounded with the grenades, Jaune found himself walking over many dead bodies. He pushed aside a flap that led to an underground room much like his own and immediately ducked when a rifle stock was swung his way. Not in the mood to hit them back, he dropped his rifle, drew his pistol and fired point blank into their face, making chunks of blood and bone splatter against his face, of which he wiped away as he picked up his rifle and made his back outside.
The area around him had also been cleared out of enemies and he signaled for his squad to follow him as they now were about to start the main assault on the hill in front of them. But seeing as how easy it was for them to take over the trenches, the hill itself should be fairly easy to capture and hold.
"Alright people reinforcements will secure these trenches, let's move up and take that hill!" Jaune and the rest of the group regrouped with the advancing tanks and started to make their way toward the imposing hill.
Bullets and grenades rained down on the advancing Atlesian soldiers, and Jaune found himself slip more than a few times up the fairly slippery muddy slope. An explosion went off near him and he saw an airborne Nora flying his way.
'Oh come on, why me!' The young woman smacked into his armored chest with a dull thud and he grunted when they tumbled to the mucky ground beneath them.
"Hey boss, what's going on!" Nora rolled off of his chest and offered a hand to the slightly winded man.
"Nothing at all Corporal, keep pushing forward and assist the others." He grabbed her hand and hefted himself up before once more making his way up the hill and shooting an enemy soldier in the shoulder. Nora on the other hand, rejoined the fray by blowing up an enemy foxhole. He shook his head at the young woman's actions as he pushed up the hill.
Unfortunately the hill was rather steep so the tanks were having a bit of a problem climbing the slope which meant the protection they had offered was now gone, but fortunately at this point, most of the Atlesian troops had jumped into the Imperial trenches and were now fighting out of open ground. Jaune followed closely behind the first soldiers who had jumped into the trenches and joined the fray. He immediately lost his grip on his weapon when someone pile-drived him in the side, not wanting to be taken off guard again he rolled away and stood up back up to face the threat.
He threw a right hook at the Imperial soldier who had tackled him, but they parried it and kicked him in the shin. Hissing from the sharp pain, Jaune grabbed a hold of the enemy's waist and now pushed them to the ground, he dug his thumbs into their eyes causing them to scream out in pain. Not wasting the opportunity, he stabbed them with Crocea Mors in the throat and twisted the blade before pulling it back out rather violently. Taking a quick glance around him he picked up his pistol that was laying on ground near him. A battle cry to his right alerted him to another Imperial soldier who was intent on skewering him with the bayonet attached to the end of their rifle.
'Can't I have just a moment to rest after that tumble!?' Having more than enough experience, Jaune flicked his wrist and sent Crocea Mors flying through the air until hit the soldier in the leg who stumbled from the knife in their thigh. He plugged them in the head effectively neutralizing the threat. Scrambling to his feet before having to deal with another enemy while on the ground he saw a familiar blonde blasting an Imperial away with her shotgun.
"Sergeant Xiao Long! Gather your men and push forward on the right side, I'll take some men and come up the left side!"
Yang gave him a thumbs up before reaching down to her ammo belt and loading a few more shotgun shells into her gun. "Come on you guys, you heard the man!" She racked a new shell into the chamber before leading her men down a trench-line. Jaune moved forward and grabbed a handful of soldiers before moving up the left trench path. Sweat started to drip off his brow from all the activity he had done so far, but that sweat ran cold when he rounded a corner and a machine gun crew pointing their gun right at him.
"Everyone get back!" But it was to late as the enemy crew opened fire on them. Some of the Atlesian soldiers were able to get off some shots before being hit by the hailstorm of bullets. Swift as a cat, a female Atlesian soldier dropped down from above the enemy and pounced upon her unsuspecting prey. The first person she landed on dampened her fall and startled the other two Imperials next her, she raised her pistol and fired two consecutive shots into their chests before she reached down to the person she had landed on and twisted their neck until a distinct cracking of bones could be lightly heard from the now dead Imperial soldier.
The raven haired woman looked over at Jaune and the few remaining Atlesians soldiers in his group and gave a small nod. "Lieutenant."
"Belladonna, nice timing there, thanks for the assist." Before anymore words were exchanged between the two, Banning came running up the trench and started to treat the wounded. Jaune left two soldiers to protect the wounded while Blake and him along with the remaining Atlesian soldiers pushing forwards towards the objective.
Fighting in a trench was not the hardest thing to do, but at the same time it was one of the biggest pains to deal with in battle, the confined spaces meant you could more easily take someone else out as there was not as many places to take cover in, but the same could also be said for yourself seeing as you faced the same dilemma. This was made abundantly clear to both Jaune and Blake when a retreating enemy soldier tossed a grenade behind them making everyone in the group dive for whatever cover they could find. Seeing that the act was futile, Jaune pumped his legs and grabbed a hold of a dead body on the ground before throwing it and himself over the live grenade.
"Grenade!" He braced for the impending explosion.
Kaboom!
Jaune felt himself go airborne as the pressure from the explosion threw him skyward. Of course the thing known as gravity pulled his body back down to the ground were he landed with a groan. While the dead body took the brunt of the blast, his chest armor took the rest of explosion, and the newly added dents to his armor proved it.
'First a flying Valkyrie and then an airborne trip via explosion, why me!?' He felt something cold touch his hand and upon looking up, saw that Blake was trying to pull him up. Shaking of the dizziness that came from the grenade he stood up and looked the young woman in the eyes. "Thanks."
She gave him a wordless nod before handing him his rifle. "You alright?" He nodded as he rolled his neck, "Yeah couldn't be better, lets go." After taking on and eliminating a few more retreating Imperial soldiers, Jaune raised his weapon only to lower it when Yang and her group came into view.
"Sergeant any problems on your end?" Yang shook her head. "Nope, they tucked tail and ran for the most part, you?"
She noticed his group was a few soldiers smaller. "Ran into a machine gun, took out a few members, Banning is taking care of them. But let's have this conversation later, we need to take this hill."
"Copy that, alright everyone move up!" The combined group of soldiers started to push up the remainder of the hill, looking back behind him, Jaune could see that the tanks were doing rather well all things considered and had been able to slowly but surely make their way up the hill and were now providing artillery and machine gun support to the rear of his group. Turning back around he raised his weapon and fired off a round at an exposed Imperial before loading in a new magazine.
"Push them back!"
"Right, right side!"
"Medic! We need a medic over here!"
The sounds of battle filled the air and the sounds of the living and the wounded carried out over the cold afternoon sky. But progress was made and soon enough Jaune and his group made it to the upper part of the hill and started to clear the area of any remaining enemies. The battle was soon winding down and only the occasional gunfire could be heard in the area.
Awhile later Jaune found himself sitting down tiredly onto a pile of ammo crates. He wiped the sweat and grime off of his face and looked at all of the destruction around him. Fortunately the destruction was mostly that of the enemy, the overall battle was a resounding success for the Atlesian side as it proved that tanks could provide much better artillery support as they were present on the battlefield and the use of sub machine guns, meant that the firepower of the heavy machine gun could now be portable.
His musings were interrupted when a raven haired female entered his view. "Lieutenant the area has been secured, also one of our smaller tanks got grazed in the battle and is now stuck in the mud down the hill." Jaune meet her gaze. "Where is it stuck?" She moved behind him and pointed. "You can see it from here." He walked over and followed were her finger was pointing and saw the small tank with one of its main treads busted from enemy fire.
"Send a squad down to see if they can help with the repairs of the vehicle." Blake nodded before leaving Jaune to carry out his order.
Meanwhile, at the location of the busted tank. Ruby found herself with a few Imperial soldiers bearing down on her position. Not letting that faze her, she raised the rifle to her shoulder and lined up a head in her scope before pulling the trigger. Their head exploded in a spray of blood as the body crumpled to the ground. She swept her scope to the right and saw a crouching enemy soldier, right as she squeezed the trigger the Imperial soldier stood up and instead of hitting their head, her bullet took a huge chunk of flesh and bone from the side of their waist.
When she first started out fighting, she saw all the horrific ways a bullet could mess up a human body and the memories plagued her mind for quite some time until she learned to cope with the horrors of war, but the scars still remained and every once in awhile the sight of a body being torn in half by her rifle made her feel queasy.
Having dispatched the enemy she turned around to see the new smaller tank bogged down in a rather deep pile of mud with a damaged tread. She hefted her rifle up and headed over too see if she could some how help the stuck tank driver out.
"The enemy's been taken care of, is there anything I can do to help?" The hatch in front of the tank was pushed open and Ruby saw a young woman covered in grease and oil step out of the drivers seat. "Salutations! I seem to have found myself in quite the predicament, many thanks for the offer to lend a hand!" Ruby remembered seeing the tank driver in the meeting before the battle. "Your name is Penelope right? I'm Ruby." She reached for a pair of shovels that were strapped to the side of the tank and handed one to the young woman.
"Indeed, you are correct, it is a pleasure to meet you Ruby!" The two of them started to dig at the mud around the tank tracks to clear the area around the damaged tread and were soon joined by a few other soldiers who offered to lend a hand with the digging out part. Once that was finished, Penny grabbed a small tool box from inside the drivers compartment and started to see how extensive the damage really was.
"The damage is not bad, I should be able to repair this quite quickly." Penny grabbed a wrench and went to work on the repairs.
Jaune walked down a trench and stopped everyone once in awhile to chat with the group of soldiers that were relaxing after the battle. By the time he had already cleaned all of his weapons, the sky had darkened as it was becoming night time, but that didn't matter to him as he was now just checking up on the status of everyone taking shelter on the captured hill. Most of the soldiers he meet were also going about cleaning their equipment with various pieces laying near them as they did so.
He saw Blake sitting down cleaning her weapon and meandered his way over to her before sitting down next to her. "What's your thoughts on the weapon Sergeant?"
She looked up from her cleaning briefly before going back to cleaning a bit of dirt off of the barrel, "Overall the weapon is adequate, the fire rate is much greater than that of our rifle's, although the round itself could be improved upon. There were cases where I had to put more than few rounds into an enemy soldier to take them down. Along those lines I feel that the internals of the weapon could also be made more reliable as it did jam on me a few times."
Jaune was a bit surprised by the amount of feedback from the rather silent woman but took it all into consideration for his report that he would be typing up later in the evening. "Well Sergeant thank you for the feedback I'll keep those into mind while I get more feedback from the others who used the weapon. On a different subject how was the book I gave you awhile back?"
The raven haired woman stopped cleaning and looked at Jaune with a glint in her eyes. "Yes, I was able to read a good amount of the book and I found it quite...enjoyable to read, thank you for letting me keep it." Unbeknownst to him, Blake had more than read a good amount of the book, in fact she had already read it more than a few times over. There were certain...mature scenes scattered throughout the story that she enjoyed reading, but the young man across from her didn't need to know that.
Jaune's face broke out into a smile upon hearing that the young woman enjoyed reading his book, but of course he wasn't about to tell her that he was the one that wrote the book. A man writing an adult fiction book was slightly embarrassing to admit to people, or at least to him it was. Putting that thought aside, he took the time to study the young woman closer. Her uniform was smeared with patches of grim and dirt just like the average soldier fighting in the front line. She was also still wearing the black bow he had seen her with the first time they had meet. Although this time it was speckled with spots of mud.
'There has to be a story behind that ribbon, considering she's still wearing in this hell hole. Guess I'll ask her.' He was about to vocalize his question but paused when he saw Yang jogging towards him shotgun in hand. She came up to him with a serious expression on her face.
"Sir, I was going through the underground officers rooms looking for any military information of importance and I found something I think you should check out." Jaune stood up and gestured behind her. "Belladonna if anything happens while I'm gone your in charge." He turned to Yang. "Show me what you found."
The two of them quickly made there way down a few trenches until they arrived in a walkway that was a bit more clean than the rest of the others."
'Why can't my walkway back in my trench be this nice, I'm envious.' Yang walked a few more feet before pointing at hole in the side of the trench.
"In there I found a relatively small room with what looked to be a shaft leading down to a underground tunnel. Since there's still some light coming from down there I think there may be people hiding down there, thought I'd inform you first before I went and fully investigated it."
Jaune walked over and crouched down to look down the shaft and saw a faint light indeed coming from below. "Alright, let's check this out, I'll go first and you take the rear and cover me, your shotgun may come in handy if there is anyone down there." He pulled out his pistol and climbed down the ladder that lead to the bottom. When he felt his boots hit ground once more he noticed that the air about him was stuffy if not a bit a warm from how much heat was being trapped as it couldn't escape to the surface that well. Sweeping the area revealed that there were a few desks and miscellaneous objects laying about the small room and he put his weapon away and waited for Yang to climb down before deciding to search further.
"Looks to me like and underground office of some sorts. Seeing as how this is fairly protected from explosions happening above, maybe they had important documents and the like stored down here. I'll check over in this area and you over there." He made his way to a desk and pulled open a drawer filled with papers, he started to go through them but found nothing of importance. Closing the drawer he opened another one and repeated the process until he had finished going through the desk and moved onto the next desk near him.
In the background he heard Yang also searching as she was a bit louder than him while doing so. But after a few minutes of coming up with squat he turned to Yang. "I didn't find anything of use, and seeing as you don't have any papers in your hands I doubt you did either." She shook her head confirming his assumption.
"Well let's go see where the rest of the tunnel pathways lead us." She grinned as a thought came to mind.
"Shell we get going? Get it? Cause shall and shell?" Jaune snorted at the pun and shook his head in amusement.
"Cute, come on." He pulled out his pistol before walking down the tunnel away from her.
Yang's face broke out into a smile as she followed behind him. She had found a person who at least tolerated her humor. And that meant the day had ended on a good note for her.
And there is the next long awaited chapter, if some parts seem awkward or a bit OOC I apologize for my writing skills. But that's my problem to deal with. Anyways thanks for reading!