I know I should have gotten this out sooner. But I had finals. Thank the heavens that German was the only big deal, if I had to take the band final I would have died from over stress. And while I a D on my German final (an A on everything else) I still passed onto with a C! that's better than thought, lol. Sad… And to celebrate, Axis and Allies! Germany FTW!
I raped Russia. I bent it over, and had my way with it. My friend, who was playing Japan, fucking dominated the seas, and made it impossible for America and Great Britain to come to Russia's aid, so me and my 63 divisions of Tanks just plain face punched Moscow's last stand of 24 tank divisions, while I rolled into Western United States with one tank, because all of their forces were trying to keep Japan's naval invasion at bay. Now the World belongs to Me (Germany) and my friend. I love Axis and Allies. When you win it makes to want to punch a baby seal and perform a twenty minute gut busting guitar solo.
General Martel slicked back his meticulous oiled hair with his fine tooth comb. He smoothed his flawless grey uniform down, and checked his boots to reassure himself of their perfect polish. Finally checking his brass buttons, he felt satisfied that his form was perfect, and his appearance flawless.
Three knocks were heard from his oak door, in an annoyingly sloppy manner.
"Enter." His door swung open silently, and the man walked in. The bootfalls were horribly off cantor, irritating Martel to no end. Martel about faced, turning so the man at the door came into his view and took in the appearance of the officer in front of him. His messy grey and orange hair and untrimmed beard framed his sloppy salute.
"General Martel." Martel gave his stiff, perfect salute in reply, and the man dropped his hand from his forehead. "You requested to see me…?" Martel kept his solid gaze up for two seconds before giving a still, short nod.
"Indeed." Martel sat back down in his chair, and waved his hand, indicating that his guest had permission to take a seat. "Brigadier General Heat, so far I am unimpressed." Heat noticeably shifted around nervously at Martel's declaration.
That was not limited to just the man sitting in front of him, however. Martel could not help but be disgusted by the entirety of the General Staff that had replaced The Fuehrer President's Staff. The majority of the new leadership had been composed of hastily promoted Colonels and Generals that had been pulled from the detached bases throughout the country, and the discipline of Bradley's Amestris was now something of the past.
Brigadier General Heat, he hoped, would not prove to be part of the weak. His appearance, however, was none too reassuring. "You promised me that you could make this into a war, Brigadier General, but after two months my troops are still on standby. How much longer will this take you?" Perhaps he had placed his confidence in the wrong hands.
"I've told you before, General, these things take time and delicacy. I assure you that you will have your war, but you need to have patience." Martel's bright blue eyes bored into Heat.
"Do not presume to tell me what I need to do. You'll find that shiny Silver Star ripped off your shoulder faster than you can say 'forgive me for my insubordination'. Am I understood?"
"Yes sir." Martel shifted his concentration away from the man in front of him, wordlessly dismissing him.
"And one more thing. The next time I see you, I expect you to be clean shaven and your hair to be either cut or combed. That is an order, Soldier."
(PAGE BREAK)
"And what's that supposed to mean?" Felix rubbed the back of Pride's ears as he purred affectionately as Riza asked the question.
"This cat is horribly disfigured," he stated. "Yet the only way you would know is if you saw it with your own eyes." She still looked a bit confused, so he continued. "He still manages to do everything that a cat should do despite his issues. He has absolutely no reason to be ashamed of himself, because rather than giving up and living his life as a cripple, he strived to render him disability as meaningless. H has a sense of pride in his life, and I have a sense of pride in him." It had an odd logic to it, but she could see how it worked. Because, based on what he had said earlier, he considered himself a cripple despite having an able body. His cat had external problems, and he had internal ones.
The topic of the conversation leapt form Felix's lap onto Riza's own, and her hand automatically reached up to stroke the cat's fur. Once past the deformities, the animal was quite beautiful. It's red and black fur had softened in the years of it' existence, blending together to create a lava like design. Its hind right leg was encased in black but other than that the two colors met in shadings and swirls throughout its body.
She had never really seen a cat with the same colors that it had.
"Where did you get him from?" she asked. Felix's eyes suddenly turned dark and Riza felt like she had touched on a very touchy subject.
"You're wondering about the color?" She nodded her head in response. "This breed of cat is very popular in the West. Pride is more or less a souvenir from my tour of duty during the Third Creatian War."
* * *
Staff Sergeant Khalid AbdulMalik knocked on the door in front of him, and waited for it to open. When it did, Khalid's Commanding General came into view.
"Sergeant." The simplicity of the greeting was what Khalid loved about it. No pointless flair. Khalid didn't even bother with a salute; it would just be waved of anyway.
"Lt. General. You asked to see me?" Finishing with a sheet of paper on his desk, the General looked up and met eye to eye with Khalid. His dark red eyes seemed almost benevolent. Khalid wasn't fooled. He may seem kind and benign at this point in time, but to think this man as a pushover would be the last mistake of your life. One didn't rise to the second highest rank in the Presidential Guard by having a merciful personality.
"Sergeant, I want to ask you a question. You don't have to worry about this going on the record or anything. Just answer honestly."
"…sir?" The three star god in front on him leaned back in his chair and kept up his gaze at Khalid.
"Why did you enlist in the army, soldier?" So he could get some.
"To serve for my country and protect those that I love." The General saw right through him.
"That's why you enlisted in ASM. But you didn't enlist in ASM; you enlisted in the Royal Presidential Guard. So I'll ask you again. Why, Sergeant AbdulMalik, did you enlist in the Guard?" Khalid grinned and stared right back at him, his own red eyes flaring with amusement.
"I joined so I could eat up the lead that my enemy spits at me, and shove it back up their asses. Sir."
"Damn right you did." The General lifted his hand up and motioned with his fingers. A tall skeleton of a man with black hair that was tortured into slavery walked up with stiff precise movement. His Dress Grays were ironed to perfection and the Silver Star on his collar, cufflinks, and shoulders were polished. "I'm having you transferred to the Western Theater to participate in the border skirmishes. You'll be under the command of Brigadier General Erwin Martel, and placed into an appropriate company as per his discretion. Brigadier General Martel will have you fight, but other than that everything depends on you, Sergeant. What say you?"
Khalid was grinning a grin bigger than the lapel on his uniform. What member of The Guard wouldn't be giddy as a school girl as the prospect that had been presented to him? He replied with the simple grunt of the Presidential Guard.
"Oohrah."
The Ishballan General wore an amused grin when Khalid voiced his agreement.
"You'll report to Western in four days. You are dismissed." Both men turned around are started to walk out of the room, but the Lt. General quickly called Khalid back for a final word. "Listen, Khalid, I have a small request to make."
"Anything, sir."
"Your mother… doesn't need to know about this. I'll already be sleeping on the couch for a week when she finds out, but if you could just refrain from telling her?" Khalid smirked at the request.
"Of course." Khalid gave a firm salute, which Lt. General AbdulMalik returned in kind, and marched out of the office. As he was walking down the hallway, he found the Brigadier General standing there, waiting for him. Khalid halted at attention and they exchanged stiff, practiced salutes. He had heard of Martel before, and knew that he wouldn't stand for the same lax attitude the Khalid displayed when around his father.
"I have heard good things about you, Sergeant." As had Khalid he, but the rumors about Martel were a lot more entertaining to focus on. "But I don't base my judgment on hearsay. As of right now I have as much confidence in you as the privates that I have yet to examine. You will gain confidence in my eyes as I see your competence, and not until then. Am I understood?" This guy was going to be a certified bitch to work under, but that was alright. Uniform precision and impeccable discipline was the number one cause of life on the battlefield, as far as Khalid was concerned, and this bastard was chalked full of it.
"Sir, yes sir!" The last time he had given a response as robotic as that had been in boot and basic, and the words nearly felt foreign in his mouth.
"That's what I like to hear, Sergeant. You will report to Foxtrot at 0700 hours on Monday." The look on his face told him that he was to be ready to deploy at 0650.
* * *
Khalid's knees gave subtle pops as he stretched after getting off the train. The frigid night air of the Western Late-fall glanced off his exposed skin, forcing him to suppress a shiver. He was used to the hot days and warm nights year round, and here the seasons slapped him across his face and hands. He made a mental note to himself that he needed to pick up a pair of gloves for his stay here.
He strode into the looming building with the ASM Lion etched on the side, carrying his heavy bag of clothing in one arm. The building was a much easier to navigate that that of Central's, and managed to find himself in the ARPG housing office with relative ease. Unfortunately for him, the quartering officer was a racist bitch and claimed that there were no open apartments and that he would have to find something else until a room cleared out.
He didn't know anyone in Western, nor did he know who his First Sergeant, Sergeant Major, or even Commanding Officer was.
Eventually he found himself in a bar on the edge of town where he had seen a group of ARPG soldiers enter. Normally he didn't frequent bars, but he had gotten desperate by that time; if he didn't meet someone he could bunk with, he'd end up sleeping on the streets. Hopefully the "Guard Brotherhood" would pull through.
"You're new here." The statement came from a golden haired woman with an ample chest and a silver flower oh her shoulder.
"Yes sir, I am." The woman scowled. She was drunk, but she clearly held her liquor well.
"We're not on duty, Sergeant. And if you call me 'Sir' one more time in an off-duty setting you'd better be blind or underneath me where it's clear that you know I'm a woman." Khalid was extremely amused by her demeanor. Judging by first impressions, she probably had the biggest, brassiest balls in the room. He sat down next to her and ordered a drink. He knew he had to be careful; his alcoholic tolerance was terrible, but if he played his cards right then he'd be able to land a bed no problem.
After the third drink he couldn't tell his threes from his aces.
After the fourth, he could tell a chair from a uniformed soldier.
He would never remember exactly what happened that night. What he would remember was that punches had been thrown, and in the morning he woke up with a cat clawing at the inside o f his skull, another reason that he avoided alcohol, and the woman with the golden hair and large breasts, who, incidentally, had an ugly purple bruise on her left cheek.
He managed to drag himself off the mattress, and smooth his uniform of wrinkles. As he was shining his boots, the woman, of whom he still didn't know her name, sauntered up beside him, clearly still recovering from the poison in her system. He stared at her for a second, and purposefully took notice of the silver flower. To say that this was a onetime thing would have been a lie. This had been a notime thing. Nothing happened in their drunken frenzy, because nothing could have happened. Even if she had made advances on him, and judging by his sleeping quarters she had, it just wouldn't have happened.
Regardless, she was an officer and a Lt. Colonel no less. She was now strictly 'Sir' or 'Colonel'. In all reality, though, he didn't even know her name, so nothing would have changed much. Hopefully, though, she would at least know who Foxtrot's CO was.
"Sir, I was just transferred in from Central. Martel assigned me to Foxtrot. Do you know where there command post is?"
"Just follow me, Sergeant. I'm headed there myself."
* * *
The shock in finding that the golden haired woman, now identified as Lt. Colonel Olivier Armstrong, was his CO didn't originate from the fact that he had slept with her. As he had acknowledged earlier, nothing had happened. The shock was from the fact that the bruise on her face originated from his hand. As it turned out, that had actually been the reason why she had taken him home with her; apparently she when she had lashed out at him for some reason or another, he had drunkenly reversed the punch, and countered. The fact that it had been a legitimate reason to take him home with her told him that he was going to get exactly what he had come here for.
Women had always made the toughest sons of bitches when they got into command positions.
As it turned out, Martel's advice to be ready to deploy at a moment's notice was said with good reason. On the first day he was in the unit they had a directive.
"Sergeant, I don't really have the time to adjust the ranks and compensate for an E6, so you'll just be directly under me," Colonel Armstrong said. Somehow he got the idea that it was just an excuse for her to get a closer observation on him, and how he operated in combat. So be it. If that was the case, then he'd just do his best to impress the shit out of her. We're going to the assistance of 369th infantry division, who's holding a position in Creata. The call for reinforcements was made last night, so we're answering."
"You got the call last night, and you're just now answering?" He climbed into the jeep after she did, and they sat down across from each other. When he got a better look at her face, he could see a look of extreme irritation on it.
"DO you know who the 369th is, Sergeant?" He shook his head. "The 369th is one of the all black regiments. The telegraph officer didn't see the importance of relaying the reinforcements request until this morning."
"And why does the fact that they're an all black regiment matter? The ARPG has an official policy-"
"-On racism, yes I know. The 'official' reason why the black boys aren't integrated throughout the regular regiments is because it 'utilizes an already established sense of brotherhood and creates a greater fighting machine.' Don't be so naïve, Sergeant. Do you know why you couldn't get an apartment last night?" The memory of the Quartering Office was vaguely in his mind.
"Because every room was full. There was no space for me." She rolled her eyes at his response and he couldn't help but start to feel rather childish.
"If that was the case we wouldn't be so understaffed in this damn rat hole. I know of entire hallways void of any living save the roaches crawling in the walls. The reason you couldn't get a room, Sergeant AbdulMalik, was because of the bloody red eyes. This is a different place than Central, Sergeant. In Central everyone at least tries to keep their racism to themselves. Here it runs rampant, like a disease."
The rest of the ride was made in silence, which was just as well, as he had a hard time hearing her over the white noise of the jeep. Finally the jeep pulled over, and the driver signaled them to disembark. As their squad led the platoon forward, they easily spotted a column of smoke rising from the forest. As they approached the smoke, they could a noise coming from the camp, which they could identify as music as they got closer.
Jazz music, to be more specific. Jazz music that Khalid realized that he realized as they moved closer. Only one man could sing like that that he knew. An old friend of his from basic.
"Sergeant Henry Lincoln Johnson. You mother fucking nigger," he said, emerging from the forest into the view of the two soldiers. The man he was addressing looked up from his position and grinned.
"I never thought I'd you here, you damn camel fucker." They two soldiers were laying about fifty feet away from about thirty dead bodies, and they looked worse than the bodies. Johnson was the worse of the two. His uniform was near black with stale blood and what wasn't soaked was completely gone, revealing burnt dead skin. Beside him lay his broken Mauser, the buttstock splintered and the machines still jammed. On the other side of him, protruding from the ground was a machete, clearly having earned a lot of use.
"Holy shit, Henry, what the hell happened to you?"
"Mother fucking Grapes thought they could take Needham here, so I had to take upon my polite self to inform them that they couldn't take him."
"You look like you were hit by a grenade."
"Three, actually."
Colonel Armstrong left three squads to hold down the position and took the rest to escort Sergeant Johnson and Private Roberts to the base hospital. Half of the things that Johnson said about the night before would have been passed off as complete bullshit if Khalid hadn't seen the evidence himself.
I'm not happy with this. Your free to tell me that it sucks.
On OCs names: I name minor OCs after historical figures. Martel came from Charles MARTEL and ERWIN Rommel (whom I idolize)
If you don't know who Henry Lincoln Johnson is, I would HIGHLY suggest looking him up. He's a badass. links don't work but fix it: badassoftheweek (dot)