Chapter 10: Article Seven
A Soldier No Longer
Beta Read By: Trusty McGoodGuy
Article Seven, commonly referred to as the Mauss incident.
If Winter was correct, then that was the to which Uwe was referring to.
"What does that have to do with anything?" Winter asked.
"Oh, it doesn't really have anything to do with what we're doing here as a whole... It's more personal than that. So please, inform your oh so ignorant comrade of what you did in Mauss before I blow us all up." Uwe threatened.
"Winter, what is she talking about?" Locus inquired.
"She's talking about Article Seven. It happened in the large town of Mauss, a town comprised of humans and faunus who accepted each other. The town had been established immediately after the great war next to the Atlesian border, and just as it started to become large enough to become a city, the attack happened." Winter explained.
"The attack?" Locus queried.
"A group of human extremists decided that they didn't want to have faunus in the town of Mauss, so they decided to do something about it. One night, under the cover of darkness, the humans kidnapped a large sum of faunus in the town, and stashed them inside of their compound on the edge of town, afterwards they pushed out the remaining humans. Since they put all the faunus in one building, a ten-man team of specialists was sent in to rescue to captives."
Winter continued. "But it all went wrong. They knew they were coming, and the extremists knew what they were up against. They set off chemical weapons all over the compound, killing all but three of the original ten-man team, as well as all of the faunus and the extremists."
"What was the point of that?" Locus wondered.
"I don't know." Winter answered.
"Did you know that my own brother was part of the faunus that got killed?" Uwe asked out of nowhere.
"You still haven't told us what that has to do with anything." Locus shot back.
"You still haven't put two and two together yet? I lied when I said there were explosives in the crates, ya know. What's really in there is much worse."
A shocked expression dawned on Winter's face a realization dawned on her.
"You want to recreate Article Seven? Are you insane?!" She yelled.
"Yes, to both questions, actually. But hey, you know what they say..." Uwe responded as she began to squeeze the detonator.
"…. The one with the most power is always right."
It all happened in an instant. Two triggers were pulled, one for the detonator, the other for Locus' MAAW. Bullets ripped through the air towards the insane faunus, but it was all for naught. The bio-weapon had already been released.
Dust tipped rounds slammed into Uwe's aura, knocking her out cold before she even had time to react.
Knowing the capturing Uwe would give them vital information to find out whoever was really responsible for setting up the attacks, Locus dragged Uwe's unconcious form they saw when they outside terrified them.
The cloud was already starting to spread.
As Winter and Locus rushed to the outside, they took note of situation at hand. To the west the humans of Sunnulus fleeing to the edges of town in a futile attempt to escape. To the east was the chemical weapon itself.
A colossal cloud of rolling toxic gas, hued a nauseating orange and two stories high, was slowly making its way in all directions, cornering and suffocating the denizens who hadn't scurried away from the cloud fast enough.
Like a tsunami that swallows everything in its path, the cloud began to advance on a small family, who were desperately making their way away from the gas.
Without a word to each other, they split up, immediately springing into action as they attempted to save as many civilians as they could manage from the toxic cloud.
Running towards the cloud, Locus spotted a little girl no older than ten cowering under a cart in the street while covering her eyes, hoping that the lethal chemical weapon was all just a bad dream.
The space mercenary dashed forward, using his strength to overturn the cart and grab the child, who began to wail in protest.
Ignoring the child's pleas, Locus began to make a beeline for the edge of town, as he ordered up the quickest route out of town, using Santa's help. As he made a mad dash to his objective, he could see Winter using her glyphs to quickly escort multiple people out the danger zone, as well as what looked like another huntsman sprinting into a house, helping a family to escape their doomed home.
As soon as he got to the edge of town, he quickly handed the girl into the hands of the first townsperson he saw, a fairly old man with a constellation of deep scars running across the left side of his face.
Not long after, the mercenary rushed back into the fray, saving as many people as he could find, his suit's respiration system allowing him to stay in the gas cloud for short period of time.
Person after person were guided by the Atlesian operators, who eventually evacuated the entirety of the population that had not succumbed to the chemical weapon to the clearing on the hill, outside of town.
There were few casualties, a small number of those injured by the gas, and fewer still who had actually died from the gas. As far as the headcount went, the townspeople estimated that only three people had died during the whole incident.
Of course, many people had questions, the first of which being...
"What on Remnant just happened?" One of the townspeople, a faunus tailor demanded to know.
"A White Fang member has detonated a chemical weapon in the center of town, that's all we can say at the moment." Locus replied, taking charge.
Of course, this response immediately set the stage for the second, and much more important question.
"Wait, White Fang? You mean you two bounty hunters knew this was gonna happen?!" A local tailor asked, anger rising in her voice.
"We were only sent here to investigate a suspect terrorist, we didn't know they had set up a chemical weapon." Winter answered, trying to salvage the current situation.
This time a new voice spoke up to question the pair. "Sent by whom?" The mayor of town inquired.
A momentary pause settled in the air before Winter replied, deciding that following military doctrine was her best way out of the situation.
"….That's classified." She replied curtly, refusing to give any more information.
And with that, the surviving members of Sunnulus were in an uproar, protesting against what they believed to be the military coming to their peaceful village without telling anyone. The military in Mistral wasn't very popular, as they made many...harsh decisions in the past.
Soon, the mayor of the town, a short, grey haired old woman, called for the noise to die down. Reasoning that the Grimm would begin to appear if they continued their uproar.
"Who exactly did we lose in the attack?" She asked her assistant.
"We lost Nuoro and Leon, they got trapped inside of their home and couldn't make it out. Their daughter Canatia, did make it out thankfully. I also saw Persian, our town huntsman, run into the cloud to try and find some more people to save, he hasn't come out since." The assistant listed.
As the townspeople looked from the assistant back to Locus and Winter, they saw only the boot prints from which the pair had stood, for they were now gone.
SOMEWHERE IN THE SUNNULUS FOREST.
Locus knew that even though they had given the townspeople minimal information, even with that, it was enough to start some controversy. The mercenary knew what would befall Winter and himself should the wrong information reach the wrong ears, but it wasn't like he could just go back and silence all the townspeople.
The only option that the two mercenaries had at this point was to fall back to friendly territory and hope that didn't happen.
Within minutes, a bullhead had been dispatched to their location, airlifting them out of the forest that stood next the once proud town, now reduced to a wasteland.
Soon, the thrust of the bullheads twin engines carried the pair of soldiers out of the AO. Even though they were out of the hotzone, both warriors knew that they still had Ironwood's wrath to deal with.
When the operators touched down in the citadel, they were immediately greeted with the sight of Ironwood's personal guard, as well as the general himself, who seemed to be quite irate at the moment, which meant that he already must have been informed on what happened in Sunnulus.
Without a wave of his hand, Ironwood dismissed his guard, who fell back behind the other workers in the area. As the general turned to walk to his office, Locus and Winter followed.
The second they reached his office, he closed the door behind them, which for the next part, was thankfully soundproofed.
"What the hell happened out there?!" Ironwood shouted at the pair, exasperated that a delicate military operation had been compromised so quickly by a single individual.
"Uwe was not working alone, there was a second individual that managed to hack into my scroll. I'm willing to bet that whoever the second individual was, was the one calling the shots, sir." Winter reported.
"And who exactly was this second individual, operative Schnee?" Ironwood asked, forcing himself to contain his anger.
"I...don't know, sir."
"Until we find out all the details of what happened in Sunnulus, finding this second individual is your top priority." Ordered the Atlesian general.
"Yes, sir." Winter replied, obediently following orders.
An Hour Later, Location Unknown
"Our operative in Sunnulus was forced to activate the device before all the preparations were made." A mysterious voice reported, speaking in front of a screen of four others, assumably the figure's superiors.
"Hmmm. This complicates things. Uwe wasn't supposed to set off the gas until our preperations with the Grimm were complete." A deep, rough voice pointed out.
"It matters not, now. Sunnulus was but a test, and even without full preparations, it appears that this test was a success. Who is our operative for our test in Vale?" A feminine voice questioned.
"It would appear by my reports that our next operative on the list is a mercenary. He's human, but it appears he'll do any job for the right price." A third voice replied.
"Do we have a name?" The feminine voice questioned once again?
"Yes. He calls himself...'Sharkface.'"
AAAAAAND CUT!
GAH IT'S SO CLICHÉ I HATE IT. I HATE IT ALL.
I was originally planning for this story to go down the M-rated path where half the town died, but I couldn't really make that work, so I had to re-write half the damn chapter. Eh whatever. Can't win em all. The second reason I completely dropped writing for a while is because I decided I wanted to start a youtube channel for the sake of having another hobby.