AN: A little one shot that took me quite a while to finish. But I hope you like it!
Disclaimer: I do not own Wreck It Ralph.
Hero's Duty resolved around rules.
Outside of game play, each soldier was only allowed to carry their standard issue blaster, for anything of a higher caliber was to be kept locked away in the armory at all times. Perimeter sweeps were done every two hours on the dot, with each team consisting of exactly five members; no more, no less. The only people allowed into the tower without the first-person shooter were the tower patrols, the same seven men that spent their nights examining every nook and cranny to destroy any extra cy-bug eggs that had escaped their earlier notice in exchange for days off. Among hundreds of others, these rules helped to keep the arcade safe from danger, guidelines and regulations that were to be followed at all costs.
Tamora knew this, and that was exactly why she had not only kicked every single one of her men out of the game for the night, but had also raided the armory for the biggest guns she could find and had hatched every egg below level four, just so that she could blow them up because the rules said she couldn't.
She hated her game.
Gritting her teeth as she watched another bug fall, its body unable to process the overflow of data as her electrical light cannon hit its wings. She dogged to the side so that the debris missed her, though she was not quite so lucky with the rain of green blood that followed. Wiping away the sticky goo that had fallen on her face, it was with a snarl that she snatched up a semi-automatic and began to fire, wiping out a small part of the swarm in mere moments as the bullets hit their targets. Already the herd was thinning, her care to destroy any extra eggs before they could hatch allowing her her slaughter without fear of being overrun. Soon, far too soon for her taste, it would be over, leaving her feeling no better than when she had started.
"Fix-It," she said coolly as a cy-bug exploded on its own, the sound of him firing a gun and bouncing around to avoid the snapping jaws more than loud enough to draw her attention. "I thought I ordered a complete lockdown, meaning no intrusions. What are you doing here?"
"You're men said that something was bothering you, but wouldn't tell me what," Felix said calmly as he stopped by her side, the gun she had been training him to use over the last few months picking off bug after bug with an ease she knew came from hours of practice. "And I'm sorry, Ma'am," he added with an apologetic shrug as he paused to change out his magazine, "but seeing as how I'm not one of your soldiers, I don't believe your orders apply to me. Would you like to tell me what's wrong now, or would you rather wait until after we're done?"
"You've got spunk, I'll give you that, Short Stack," Tamora admitted begrudgingly as she shifted slightly closer to her boyfriend, still impressed that, even after they had been together for so long, he had the nerve to disobey an order that he knew applied to him as well as they others. Covering him as he finished reloading his gun, for another hour the two shot in silence, the extra pair of eyes and hands helping to decimate her opponents far quicker than she could have on her own. Had it been any other night, she would have enjoyed it, the feeling of her handyman's back pressed against the side of her leg as they destroyed the hated creatures, but it was not any other night. As the final cy-bug fell before their combined onslaught, Tamora only found that she was even more upset then she had been earlier that evening.
"Nice shooting. Now get out," Tamora growled as she began sorting through the burnt shells and still twitching organs, coating her armor in grime as she searched for the weapons she had stolen. Some she knew would have been transported back to the armory the moment they had been discarded, the game reconstructing their code will full chambers and charged batteries, but the rest she would have to take back and clean herself, a solitary task that would take the rest of the night if she was lucky.
"Not until you tell me what's wrong. Tamora," Felix said softly, her first name sliding from his lips as he dropped appearances and politeness for an actual connection, "please, honey, what's bothering you?"
At the sound of her name, the harsh words she had been about to say dyed on her lips. Tamora slumped to the ground, blaster loose in her grip as she finally told him why she was breaking.
"I lost Markowski."
"He's programmed to die first," Felix said after a moment of silence, walking over so he was standing next to where she had sat. Rolling up his sleeves, making sure his hammer was securily in his belt, he picked up where she had left off, sorting through the muck and mud for the weapons they needed to retrieve. For a few moments this continued before he spoke again. "You know that," he grunted as he threw a missile launcher that was almost larger than him over his shoulder, tottering unsteadily as he tried to carry it to the cruiser. "And bless his heart, but when he's not in the game, he's always getting stuck in someone's closet, so I'm not surprised the programmers put him out of commission as soon as possible. My land, Tammy; if you can't find the boy, just come and get us and we'll help you search for him. You don't nee-"
"Felix, I lost him."
Pausing for a moment at the tone of her voice, Felix finished packing away the weapon before turning toward her, his frown deepening as he actually looked at her. Before, he had just thought her angry, upset that the day had gone so badly player-wise. Going off what her men had hinted at when they had pointed out the swarm to mark her location, he had just thought her frustrated by the children of the arcade.
Now that he could see the look in her eyes, he realized just how wrong he had been. That, and the blaster she had been using wasn't her own, Brad's dogtags and the golden hammer she had painted on the side missing from the gun. Instead, in their place hung a plastic covered picture of an older woman who looked a lot like the missing marine.
"Tammy," he said softly as he hopped to her side, "what happened today?"
"It's his mother," she said instead, reaching out to stop the picture from swinging so they could properly look at her face. "She's only a programmed memory, but she was what kept him fighting."
"Tamora, what-"
"A cybug got past our lunch patrol," she said quickly, as if saying it faster would make it less painful. "Just a little one, but we've seen what happens when they get out. " Letting out a small, harsh laugh, Tamora reached to grab him, pulling him into her lap so she was curled around him, her cheek pressed against his hat so he couldn't see her face. "He killed it on the way to Burger Run, but not before it got him. By the time we found him, it was too late."
"Oh, Tammy," Felix whispered softly as he pulled one of her hands away from his waist, pulling off her gore coated glove before pressing his lips against her palm as she tightened her grip around him. "Sweetheart, I'm so, so sorry. He was a good kid."
"He was just a kid," she replied shakily, her fingers curling so they were gripping the fabric of his shirt, "a kid I was supposed to protect."
"Tamora Jean Calhoun," Felix said instantly, his voice hard and commanding as he twisted so he could cup her face between his hands, forcing her to look him in the eye, "this was not your fault, and don't you dare go taking the blame. You did everything you were supposed to-"
"But it wasn't enough," Tamora cut in, her body beginning to tremble. "I couldn't save him. What good am I if I can't even protect my own men? If I can't even protect them from this damn hell hole we've been programmed into?" Swallowing thickly, Tamora shook her head before knocking Felix's hat to the side, burying her face into his hair blocking out the barren, currently green-covered world around them. "I couldn't save him, Felix," Tamora said softly, as clearly as she could through the warm, wet tears that were leaving tracks down her cheeks. "I can't save any of them. We're stuck here until we're unplugged, and even then, I just can't save them."
Felix didn't have a response, couldn't think of the words that would help to lighten the load Tamora carried- what could? What words could he speak to help her, when everything she spoke was true? So long as Hero's Duty existed, she and her men would spend the rest of their days inside of it, performing their programmed tasks to the best of their ability, now down one vital man.
No words could change that fact, so Felix just held her as close as he could, ignoring the blood and mud and general grime that covered them both to just hold her.
Tamora hated her game, hated the monsters that had tethered them to their own little hell, hated almost everything to come from it except her men.
But she was disgusted with herself, because the number one rule she had been programmed with, the single most important rule that she herself lived by as commander of this unit, was "keep your people safe."
And she had failed.