"You looked pretty beat up back there, are you sure you're okay to keep going?" RO asked as her and the Commander moved towards the next course.
"Now that you mention it, I could use a day on the beach instead." The Commander joked.
"Hah, maybe next year."
"I'll settle for an Ibuprofen then...Or five..."
Suddenly, the walls began to vibrate with the booming of bass in the near-distance.
Ba-dum-dum-dum
Dum-dum dum-dum-dum-dum...
"Hold on...Do you hear music?" The Commander asked as the sound gradually grew closer.
Within a few seconds, G11, fresh from her Neural Upgrade, rolled around the corner on her new G-Box, stocked to the brim with Red Bull and blasting music from its speaker.
Three, six, nine, damn they fine
Hopin' she can sock it to me one mo' time
Get low (get low), get low (get low)
Get low (get low), get low
To the windooooooooow (to the window)
To the wall (to the wall)...
The Commander and RO remained speechless as G11 rolled up to them, sleepily yawning as she stretched out her arms and rubbed her eyes.
"Morning, Commander..." G11 yawned out.
"That's..uhm..." RO fumbled for the words.
"Hey, G11, could you pass me one of those?"
G11 nodded, grabbed a Red Bull from the G-Box, and tossed it to the Commander.
The Commander deftly caught the drink and popped the tab, "Thanks, as you were."
The G-Box kicked into gear and resumed steadily rolling down the corridor until the music eventually faded into the distance.
RO and the Commander continued to stand idle, staring blankly down the hall G11 disappeared down.
"...I'm waiting on the smart-ass comment, Commander." RO broke the silence.
"I...uh...Yeah, I got nothing..." The Commander replied before downing the Red Bull, tossing the empty can aside into a trash can. "Alright, I'm good now, let's get this thing done..."
After a few more minutes of walking, the Commander and his adjutant arrived at the coordinates they had been sent.
"Strange...I don't remember there being a door here." The Commander said, staring at the door labeled 'Night Operations Training'.
The sound of snoring suddenly caught his attention, he turned to the source to find Papasha once again asleep at the controls of her construction mech, empty paper cups stained with coffee littered at its feet.
"...Anyways, I thought this was one of the online things...Yeah, it just gave me a quick simulation telling me that it's dark outside when it's night-time and what NODs and PEQs did. Who's in charge of the evaluation here?"
"Let me see...that would be..."
"Hallo, Kommandant~" A familiar voice sounded just as RO was about to check.
UMP 45 stepped into view, wearing her trademarked mischievous grin.
"45...You're in charge here?" The Commander asked.
"Mmhm, seems like a waste of hard-earned money to me, but if someone wants to pay me a handsome sum to stand around, I'm not one to object."
"And who might this someone be?"
"I'm afraid I am not at liberty to say, Commander."
"I knew it, someone's fucking with me!"
"Can't you just tell us, 45? The Commander has enough to deal with as is without this little stunt." RO spoke up.
"No can do, RO. I like you guys, the Commander's one of my best customers, but I'm still a professional - I can't break OPSEC for personal interests."
"Well, can you at least just go ahead and check me off? Between Sector 11 and Tallinn, we'd be dead by now if I didn't know how to work in the dark." The Commander asked.
45 wagged her finger. "Sorry, Commander, no cheating...And speaking of cheating, I'll need to hold on to your lovely adjutant's bag for her."
"And why would you need to do that?" RO asked suspiciously.
"Because you're going with him, and you will only be allowed to use the equipment in this bag."
UMP pulled out a small duffle bag and handed it over to the Commander. The Commander moved to unzip it, but 45 seized him by the wrist and shook her head.
"No peeking until you're inside. Part of the exercise." 45 winked.
"Great...so what are we going to be doing in there?"
"Somewhere in there is a data terminal, you two will need to make your way to it, grab the data, and make your way back here. Should be easy-peasy"
"And it's just me and RO? We're still 3 people short of a proper fireteam."
"You'll just have to sort that out yourself."
"Right...So where's my gun?"
"Your equipment's in the bag."
The Commander gave the bag a light shake. "It feels a little light..."
"Your equipment's in the bag." UMP repeated.
The Commander scoffed and shook his head. "Come on RO, let's get this over with..."
The Commander swung open the door and stepped inside the course, RO following behind him. Upon crossing inside, both of them froze, the door promptly slammed shut behind them.
They were outside in a dark forest, a clear night sky overhead, a full moon and plethora of stars shimmering among it as crickets loudly chirped from all directions...But, wasn't it late morning? What the hell...
"Papasha's really outdone herself this time..." RO finally spoke.
"How...You know what, never mind, let's see what they gave us." The Commander said as he unzipped the duffle bag. "Of course we have to fumble around for this shit in the dark..."
There were only two items inside - a pair of quad-tubed night vision goggles and a small flashlight. No weapons to be found.
"Great...I guess this is a stealth mission then..." The Commander sighed out.
"You can take the NVGs, this body has Night Vision integrated into-...Wait, what do you mean I don't have administrator privileges?! I AM THE ADMINISTRATOR!" RO huffed in frustration.
"They've locked you out of your own functions? You'd need Command Authorization to do that! I am going to smoke the fuck out of whoever's doing this!"
The Commander took the night vision and examined it. "Wait a minute...This...These goggles are from the Modern Warfare 2019 Dark Edition...They don't even work anymore either, figures..."
Meanwhile, RO examined the flashlight. "An Olight...Well, let's see if this at least works."
The Commander's eyes widened. "Olight?...WAIT - RO, DON'T!"
The moment RO switched on the Olight, the Commander frantically ripped it straight out of her hands and chucked it into the air as hard as he could.
"COVER!" The Commander yelled as he dove to the ground, pulling RO with him.
The light careened into the air, and had only made it a short distance away before it exploded in a spectacular fireball, briefly lighting the night sky and the ground below like a display of fireworks. After the blast, the Commander and his adjutant slowly sat up.
The Commander got to his feet and dusted himself off. "Damned Chinesium almost got me this time. Remember kids: Buy once, cry once."
"Commander...Sometimes I have no idea what the hell you're even saying." RO shook her head and she followed suit.
"They gave us bad equipment, and now we're stuck here with nothing."
"Yeah...I figured that part out."
RO's gaze turned to the nearly pitch black forest in front of them as their situation began to sink in. A pit began to form in her stomach as she stared into the blackness. "So...We're going in there?"
"That's probably where the terminal is, it wouldn't be training if it didn't suck."
"With no light...and I can't use my Night Vision..."
"We knew this wasn't going to be easy. We'll just have to adapt, let's not let whoever's doing this beat us."
"Right...after you..."
"Uh...Something wrong, RO? You usually don't hesitate to take point."
"It's...nothing...Hey, you're the Commander, you're supposed to be telling me where to go!" RO began to grow flustered
"I don't have the tactical map, or the CROSS-COM; I can't sync with your Zener network. I don't have any more of an idea where the hell we're going than you do...Well, we're looking for a data terminal, that means it's likely in some kind of powered structure..."
"At least I still have my navigation modules, so we won't be completely lost."
"Alright, hell with it, this way I suppose. Stay low and quiet, we're screwed if we get spotted."
The Commander and RO crept into the woods, moving cautiously as they watched for patrols or any kind of structure that could house their objective. Once the Commander's eyes adjusted, the darkness wasn't too bad - there was a full moon out, which made it so it wasn't "can't see your hand in front of your own face" dark. Surprisingly, it only took a few minutes of walking before a small building came into view, sitting in a small clearing in the forest a couple dozen meters away.
"Nobody at the door, or a single patrol around the perimeter. We didn't come across anybody on our way here either, I was expecting at least something to happen by now. Did our culprit just think that I was afraid of the dark, or something?...Hey, RO, are you alright? You're being awful quiet."
The Commander turned to his adjutant to find her nervously hunched up. "RO?..."
"Commander...could I...hold on to you?..." RO asked hesitantly. "I mean...It would be easy to lose track of you in this darkness...and it would really make things hard if we got separated and lost..."
"Really? It's not that dark. I wouldn't say it's well lit here, but I can see you just fine, and I can't imagine your eyesight being worse than mine."
RO didn't give an answer, her trembling hand latched onto his sleeve and gripped it like a vise.
"I see...I was wondering why they sent you with me and not someone like Mark 23 or Groza..."
"It's not like that!" RO snapped defensively. "It's just...M16 used to tell these stories about...things in the woods at night and...ARGH! I don't wanna think about it!" RO's grip tightened.
"Then don't. Let's just grab that data and get the hell out of here."
"It just...feels like we're being watched."
"You're just scaring yourself, RO. Try to think happy thoughts or something."
"Alright...I'll think about murdering you in your sleep if you tell SOP-II or AR-15 about this."
"Good enough, I guess..."
The two continued creeping along towards the structure, RO tensely shifting around as her hand clung to the Commander's sleeve. Soon, they reached the building.
RO slowly scanned the building. "I'm getting a reading inside...Just a faint EMF reading in one of the rooms. It could be our terminal..."
"I've got nothing in the windows, I didn't see any kinds of footprints or any other signs of traffic on the way here, either...It's as if this place is completely unguarded."
"I can still feel...something watching us..." RO trembled out.
The Commander sighed and shook his head. "I told you to stop scaring yourself, RO."
"But...what if there's something in there?"
"Then punch it in the fucking face, I don't know, you're the super-soldier."
"R-right..."
RO cautiously nudged the door open, and the two crept inside. The building was completely derelict - no lights, no furniture or decorations, no signs of life at all. Every footstep they took felt like it was resonating through the whole building. It was like they were in those "Backrooms" that MDR would tell stories about. Eventually, they reached the room where RO had detected the EMF signature. The room was completely empty, except for a small table with a CRT monitor on it, faintly humming and illuminating the room with its glare, besides it, a small PC tower.
"This must be it." RO whispered shakily as she cautiously approached it. "The data's encrypted, this will take a few seconds."
"I guess I'm on watch then...for whatever that's worth."
"Not helping, Commander..." RO anxiously hissed.
The Commander began to turn to watch the door. "Whatever, just do your thing and we can be out of-...What the fuck?..."
It only took a second for RO to decrypt the data into plaintext - nothing more than a single line. In fact, it turned out to only be two words: "Behind you."
RO's blood(?) froze solid as she disconnected from the terminal. "C-Commander?..." She stuttered out.
When no response came, she slowly, hesitantly began to turn around, feeling a presence behind her.
"BWAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH" A Doll dressed in a shark mascot costume yelled suddenly, standing only a couple feet away from RO.
"SKINWALKER!" RO shrieked, and slugged the mascot straight across the jaw with a right hook.
The costume let out a faint squeak as RO's fist connected. Architect's head snapped to the side, then gently craned downwards before her knees gave out from under her and she crumpled to the floor, the costume squeaking again as the former ringleader thudded on the ground, whimpering softly.
"Jesus!" The Commander exclaimed, having watched RO lay out the former ringleader with a single punch. "First you hide her legs from her, and now you gotta go and crack her in the jaw, too?"
"You told me to!" RO snapped defensively. "And SOP-II and I apologized for doing that with her legs! We baked her a cheesecake and everything!"
"Still, I didn't think this of all things would get you worked up...Skinwalkers don't even take the forms of fish, anyways."
"Hey, sharks can be mammals!"
"I think those are whales, RO...Or was it dolphins?"
"Well, maybe it was sharks, too!"
The costume slowly began to roll over on its back. "Actually, I'll have you know that sharks lack mammalian characteristics such as hair or mammary glands, their skeletons are made purely of cartilage whereas a mammals would be made of bone, they also breathe using gills as opposed to lungs, have scales, and are cold-blooded. They also lack a Neocortex in their brains compared to mammals."
RO and the Commander slowly turned to each other.
"What? I can know stuff too!" Architect pouted.
"Right...Well, we know for sure now that this is just another prank..." The Commander said before turning back to Architect. "Architect, who put you up to this?"
Architect crossed her fins. "Nuh-uh! I ain't no snitch! She told me that she'd give me lots of cheesecake if I didn't tell anybody!"
"Ah ha! You said 'She'!" The Commander said triumphantly. "So, our mystery culprit is female, that narrows it down to-" The Commander said, before he quickly remembered that he was the only male on this entire base. "...Everybody besides me, and I didn't get that trashed last night..."
"So we're still at square-zero..." RO said dejectedly. "This was a complete waste of time..."
Architect tried to get herself up, but the costume was difficult to move in, and she could only succeed in flailing her limbs around like an overturned beetle. "Hey guys...could I uh...get some help?"
RO crossed her arms. "Are you going to tell us who did this?"
Architect shook her head. "I said. I. ain't. no. snitch."
"Then you can get yourself up. Come on, Commander, I've had enough of this place."
"Meanie!" Architect yelled as RO all but dragged the Commander out of the room and back towards the exit, while the former ringleader continued to fruitlessly kick and flail to no avail. "I'll get you two back for this!...Some day!...Damn it, not again! Argh! Where's Gager when you need her?!"
The door to the training course burst open, and RO angrily stormed back into the hanger, dragging the Commander behind her.
"You two have fun in there?" UMP-45 said with a smirk.
RO glared at 45 as she ripped her bag out of her hands and threw it over her shoulder. "Shut it."
45 chuckled. "Looks like someone's a little rattled, what happened to our volunteer?"
"I can show you, if you want to push your luck." RO snapped.
"Oooohhhh, scary. I think I'll pass."
The Commander gripped RO's shoulder and began tugging her back. "Come on, RO. Let's go."
RO shot daggers at 45 as she and the Commander walked out of the room and to the next "course".
RO's hands were balled into fists as she silently stormed along the corridor towards the next set of coordinates.
"So...what's next?" The Commander asked hesitantly.
"Fairy training. The fairies are terrible at keeping secrets - we'll get something out of one of them."
It was clear that what transpired had gotten to RO way more than it had the Commander, but that only deepened the mystery. Who could have it out for both of them, and why? Just what exactly was the meaning of this? He'd find out one way or the other, even if he couldn't get somebody to talk. If there was some kind of grudge at the center of this, then the perpetrator would reveal themselves eventually. He just had to survive long enough to get there...
