It was late in the evening when General Clairence Walker entered the tent. He had just come back from battle; one that he was sure that he was going to become the victor in. He was sadly mistaken as the enemy overwhelmed his forces. The squadron of troops he had at his disposal was wearing thin as the forces of the Crimson Army broke through at Naughton base. Walker was sure that his next plan was going to prevail and push back the forces that beat down from above. First Lieutenant Gates, who laid out a map on the table, followed Walker into the tent. "We have to push them back." Gates' voice was harsh from hatred. "We need to push the mutants back to Old Boston." The general considered the words said before carefully choosing which plan he would carry out.
"Don't worry, Sam. Those freaks have had their last win." He pointed at the map in an effort to visualize his idea to the lieutenant. "We'll send our army over Show-Dash ravine. They will intercept the enemy on their own territory to take them by surprise." He glided his finger over the enemy base to point at its backside. "Here, we will position our snipers while our army is in combat. And as soon as we get the okay, we'll retreat back to Clarence base. Once everything is calm again, we wait for their commander to show his face and let the snipers do their job!" Gates pounded his fist in protest.
"That's not going to be good enough. The commander does nothing but keep the peace and keep them orderly. If you kill him they will simply go rampaging into us with all of their forces and wipe us out even faster." The lieutenant took another look at the map. "However..."
The unit of snipers held their position just behind the enemy base. This base, known to the mutants as Blood-Gulch, was one of their more recent settlements. They set it up to allow for oil extraction from the Earth. Although they see it as an act against God, their Chief prays continuously from day to day, hoping for forgiveness. "My chieftain," called one of the guards as he entered the straw house. "The soldiers are mounting an assault on our base." The chief, known as Cantrell Kobal, sat with his prayers, not saying a word. The guard held his position and waited for Chief Kobal to finish his ritual.
ooo
"They think they can surprise us by attack on our own ground," the old chief explained. "Launch a counter attack, but maintain the guard around the precious life of the Earth. We need to keep it our of their filthy hands." He turned back to his position of hopeful sanctuary. "If anyone is going to use it, it might as well be those that understand the consequences behind those actions." The guard bowed to his chief and left him to his pleas. While outside, he told the messenger what he should tell the men at the gate. If they were going to battle those "vial spawn," they better prepare for their attack now. "After all, the symmetrics only want the surface so that they can start another long winter. We can't let them anger God again. We've already taken our punishment from the last one." The messenger left for the front of the village, impatient to get the news to the others. The guard, now making his patrol around the small town, stopped into the beast camp to check on their latest technology. Inside, he found their secret weapon, a handsome piece of fine mutant technology. Nothing like what the symmetrics had come up with. This was truly good enough to be called a tool of the Evolved.
ooo
General Walker was standing near the infirmary tent, waiting for his troops to line up at the entrance to their camp. The infirmary was set at the entrance to receive soldiers and heal them as soon as they could. They had found, however, that prolonged exposure to the almost non-existent radiation still in the ground along with combat experience aloud some of the soldiers the ability to self heal. This was a strange twist on what they knew radiation could do. Nonetheless, it was help in the war effort and was greatly appreciated, regardless why it was happening. As long as the radiation didn't kill anyone, it was a big help.
The infantry slowly came out of their tents, sheds, and broken buildings. At their current location there were several buildings with the bottom floor still able to be used as shelters. The men drew straws to find out who got to stay in the buildings, who got to stay in the sheds, and who had to remember how to set up a tent without an instruction manual. The former was always preferred over the latter. Especially when it began to rain. The clouds in the air would always pour down acid rain. It wasn't toxic to the point where if you touch it you will die, but rather where it would burn slightly and made it increasingly difficult to sleep. The tents were made to hold back the rain, but not the wind. If a strong wind came by, the tents usually are blown across the camp and need to be retrieved in the burning rain and setup all over again. Needless to say, the men in tents look very tired.
Walker got up from leaning against an old telephone pole and walked to the front of the pack. He had prepared this speech last night rather than sleeping and didn't want to mess it up in front of his men. He nodded to let them know that they could relax. Most of them couldn't have been any older than seventeen. The limit was eighteen, but they needed the men and so didn't entirely care. "You men are about to encounter an enemy base. They have overwhelming forces, and I don't expect a victory from this battle." Walker glanced around at the soldiers, all very confused about his statement. "Rather, I expect us to lose. We are required to lose this fight in order to win the war. We will not fight them back. Instead, we will let them fight us back." The soldiers were starting to realize the plan that was about to unfold. "I don't want any heroics in this match, but I don't want you to stop fighting either. We are going to fight a believable fight. Some may die in this battle, and I know how you would feel, dieing in such a way. But know this, if we fight hard enough and long enough to let them think they won, we will gain this battle in the end. Today, we will be victorious!"
The crowd cheered as their leader walked towards the back. The men began to issue out weapons for the upcoming fight. "General..." One of the privates ran up to Walker with the results from the sniper movement. "The snipers are in place and ready to fire on your command. They haven't been noticed yet." Walker nodded his head and continued his walk to the command building. The ground was bare all around him. Not a single blade of grass was left from before the war. Craters were spread across the landscape from the new war, the fight for the surface. He hoped that the freaks didn't find the snipers by now. Even with the vehicles at their command, it still took two days to get a message between the two groups of men. General Walker entered the building and sat down at the old diner bar.
The only drinks they had were processed water juice that had been extracted from either the underground wells or the fruits grown in the caves. Everything had to be cleaned and processed to ensure that nothing would be poisonous. Although they only could afford water at this base, the men could pretend it was the drink they wanted. "Two shots of whisky, on the rocks." Two glasses of water were poured and two cubes of ice were placed into each one. The ice was frozen fruit juice; the only way they could drink the juice without running out of supplies. Walker grabbed up one glass and drank it within seconds. The frozen juice melted quickly in the warm air and walker poured the extra juice into his second glass to make the taste more sweat. Turns out the cubes were grape, his favorite flavor. The bar keeper always tried to ease the men's pain in any way he could. The second glass was taken slowly, to keep the flavor as long as he could. It would be another six hours before his next drink. His commander sat next to him, ordering a likewise mythical drink, and began to talk about business. Walker wasn't listening to him. He just made the occasional nod to show that he understood, and continued to sip his whisky.
ooo
The chief stood from his long hours of prayers and walked outside of his hut to find that his men were conducting a ceremony. This happened every night before a battle. The ceremony was based around their faith in god and was used as an instrument for his blessing. There was always dancing around a fire, a big feast from what they kill to survive, and always a prayer to guide their dinner's spirit to its rightful place. This was their way of life. They asked for God's blessing then defied him and asked for his forgiveness. Little wonder why the symmetrics rose from the dead to fight back. Their constant sins merited a test of beliefs. But their way of life could not be helped. The ground is not fertile in enough areas yet to grow crops. The few spaces of land that can grow anything are filled with plants that the animals feed on. So they must kill to survive, in more ways than one.
Chief Kobal wondered around the growing crowd as people from the entire village gathered for the feast. The prayers were soon to begin and nobody was to be absent. "The sins of the hunters were to be the sins of them all, so all must pray for forgiveness." That was what they said to anyone that questioned the ways of this ceremony. As Kobal made his way through, he took note of the men that survived the last battle. They were wearing the uniforms of the men they had killed, in honor of their brave fighting. "Even though we must fight these men to survive, we must honor those that die in battle, for they fought bravely and died like a warrior." No one questioned their motives or the fact that they were intent on killing them. All of them believed that god, to test their loyalties, resurrected the symmetrics from their deep, peaceful slumber. And if they killed the symmetrics, it would set their soul at ease again, and let them sleep for eternity.
The men and women dancing in the center were well practiced in this kind of entertainment. The only purpose this served was to keep the guests busy while everyone showed and they all prepared for the prayers. Once Kobal had sat down into his chair, everyone was ready for the opening prayers for the night's feast. They usually lasted the good part of an hour, but were different every time. The youngest, most inexperienced member would be required to write a new prayer with the same meaning as the others preceding it but in his or her own words. The women usually were better at the speeches because theirs held more emotion, while the men talked about honor and dignity. Men were warriors at heart, and nothing would ever change that. The one that read the speech this time was a woman. She had learned their native language long before she knew of the ceremony's true purpose. Her name was Autumn Sonoma. She was, in Kobal's eyes, an angel among devils. The least deformed child from the radiation.
In most of the village's eyes, she was a sign that they might finally be receiving the forgiveness that they have been praying for, freedom from the radiation, the humiliation, and the pain. She had a nearly flawless face, with the occasional imperfection on the cheek or neck. The chief was already claiming her as his own, and no one was going to challenge his right. The chief gets to pick his mate over anyone in the village, and in this case, Autumn agreed with the decision. They had known each other since they were children, both watching their fathers go out for the hunt. When Kobal became of age, he had been taken from the village for a few years to learn to hunt like his father. In this ritual, they had to stay away until the child had killed his first beast. Until then, the father teaches the son to hunt for small animals for them to survive. In this ritual, the father is not aloud to do any killing of any kind. Each person has their own style of hunting, so the other hunters knew if the rules were disobeyed. It took Kobal nearly three years to learn to hunt, and the entire time, he was thinking about Autumn. This told him she was the one. When he became chief, he let Autumn know of the marriage that he planned, and he didn't abuse his powers, rather he let her decide. He was glad he did, and they both are happier for it. The marriage was to take place a week from tomorrow.
When Autumn finished her prayer, she had people in tears about their sins. Few could do this, even amongst the women, but Autumn had a majestic voice and was very emotional with her words. She was near tears over her own prayer, and most people that night actually thought she was a gift from heaven, and Kobal wouldn't want it any other way. He was already having people making her dress for the ceremony and they had found the purest white their people had seen in decades. She had not seen the dress yet, but he knew she was going to love it. While the villagers were eating their feast and dancing to the music, they were still talking about Autumn's prayer. Meanwhile, she was talking to her friends when Kobal walked up behind her. Her friends stopped talking and looked up at Kobal, who toward over their heads with his strong frame. Autumn followed their gaze to her fiancé's eyes. "Cantrell..."
"Hello, Autumn." They stood there in each other's gaze, without thought but only feeling. A hint of red flushed over autumn's face and she looked down.
"It's been..."
"Three years, this June." She smiled in recognition of the date. He had left for the war on that date. He was still a hunter at that point, not even a warrior yet. The war had just started earlier that year. None of the chiefs knew how the symmetrics were going to attack. Their maneuvers were old and strange to them. They hadn't been used in ages and no one knew how to counter them. While fighting in the war, Kobal was separated from the rest of the group. He tried to make his way back to the village, but found himself looking at a party of symmetrics waiting to strike. He sabotaged their weaponry while they were sleeping and left back for the village to warn them. When the battle began, it was an easy victory for the evolved. The surprise party was easy pickings for the hunters while they were still figuring out that they had no offensive tools. This act earned Kobal his chief level and they allowed him to choose his own hunters. He received information that the village he lived in was destroyed in the war. Most of the villagers had escaped to another village, but they had no way to identify who made it and who didn't. It took Kobal another year to find where Autumn had fled, and one more to get there. The entire time he was gone, they were both depressed, not knowing if they would see each other again. "Far too long."
"For both of us." Autumn smiled at Cantrell. They held hands as they walked through to rivers of flesh that made up the party. Everyone they passed was commenting on their engagement in one way or another. Most of the people were looking forward to their engagement, but there were always one or more people that wished they could be in Autumn's place. They walked out of earshot of the other people and began to talk about their lives spent away from each other.
"Don't worry, Sam. Those freaks have had their last win." He pointed at the map in an effort to visualize his idea to the lieutenant. "We'll send our army over Show-Dash ravine. They will intercept the enemy on their own territory to take them by surprise." He glided his finger over the enemy base to point at its backside. "Here, we will position our snipers while our army is in combat. And as soon as we get the okay, we'll retreat back to Clarence base. Once everything is calm again, we wait for their commander to show his face and let the snipers do their job!" Gates pounded his fist in protest.
"That's not going to be good enough. The commander does nothing but keep the peace and keep them orderly. If you kill him they will simply go rampaging into us with all of their forces and wipe us out even faster." The lieutenant took another look at the map. "However..."
The unit of snipers held their position just behind the enemy base. This base, known to the mutants as Blood-Gulch, was one of their more recent settlements. They set it up to allow for oil extraction from the Earth. Although they see it as an act against God, their Chief prays continuously from day to day, hoping for forgiveness. "My chieftain," called one of the guards as he entered the straw house. "The soldiers are mounting an assault on our base." The chief, known as Cantrell Kobal, sat with his prayers, not saying a word. The guard held his position and waited for Chief Kobal to finish his ritual.
ooo
"They think they can surprise us by attack on our own ground," the old chief explained. "Launch a counter attack, but maintain the guard around the precious life of the Earth. We need to keep it our of their filthy hands." He turned back to his position of hopeful sanctuary. "If anyone is going to use it, it might as well be those that understand the consequences behind those actions." The guard bowed to his chief and left him to his pleas. While outside, he told the messenger what he should tell the men at the gate. If they were going to battle those "vial spawn," they better prepare for their attack now. "After all, the symmetrics only want the surface so that they can start another long winter. We can't let them anger God again. We've already taken our punishment from the last one." The messenger left for the front of the village, impatient to get the news to the others. The guard, now making his patrol around the small town, stopped into the beast camp to check on their latest technology. Inside, he found their secret weapon, a handsome piece of fine mutant technology. Nothing like what the symmetrics had come up with. This was truly good enough to be called a tool of the Evolved.
ooo
General Walker was standing near the infirmary tent, waiting for his troops to line up at the entrance to their camp. The infirmary was set at the entrance to receive soldiers and heal them as soon as they could. They had found, however, that prolonged exposure to the almost non-existent radiation still in the ground along with combat experience aloud some of the soldiers the ability to self heal. This was a strange twist on what they knew radiation could do. Nonetheless, it was help in the war effort and was greatly appreciated, regardless why it was happening. As long as the radiation didn't kill anyone, it was a big help.
The infantry slowly came out of their tents, sheds, and broken buildings. At their current location there were several buildings with the bottom floor still able to be used as shelters. The men drew straws to find out who got to stay in the buildings, who got to stay in the sheds, and who had to remember how to set up a tent without an instruction manual. The former was always preferred over the latter. Especially when it began to rain. The clouds in the air would always pour down acid rain. It wasn't toxic to the point where if you touch it you will die, but rather where it would burn slightly and made it increasingly difficult to sleep. The tents were made to hold back the rain, but not the wind. If a strong wind came by, the tents usually are blown across the camp and need to be retrieved in the burning rain and setup all over again. Needless to say, the men in tents look very tired.
Walker got up from leaning against an old telephone pole and walked to the front of the pack. He had prepared this speech last night rather than sleeping and didn't want to mess it up in front of his men. He nodded to let them know that they could relax. Most of them couldn't have been any older than seventeen. The limit was eighteen, but they needed the men and so didn't entirely care. "You men are about to encounter an enemy base. They have overwhelming forces, and I don't expect a victory from this battle." Walker glanced around at the soldiers, all very confused about his statement. "Rather, I expect us to lose. We are required to lose this fight in order to win the war. We will not fight them back. Instead, we will let them fight us back." The soldiers were starting to realize the plan that was about to unfold. "I don't want any heroics in this match, but I don't want you to stop fighting either. We are going to fight a believable fight. Some may die in this battle, and I know how you would feel, dieing in such a way. But know this, if we fight hard enough and long enough to let them think they won, we will gain this battle in the end. Today, we will be victorious!"
The crowd cheered as their leader walked towards the back. The men began to issue out weapons for the upcoming fight. "General..." One of the privates ran up to Walker with the results from the sniper movement. "The snipers are in place and ready to fire on your command. They haven't been noticed yet." Walker nodded his head and continued his walk to the command building. The ground was bare all around him. Not a single blade of grass was left from before the war. Craters were spread across the landscape from the new war, the fight for the surface. He hoped that the freaks didn't find the snipers by now. Even with the vehicles at their command, it still took two days to get a message between the two groups of men. General Walker entered the building and sat down at the old diner bar.
The only drinks they had were processed water juice that had been extracted from either the underground wells or the fruits grown in the caves. Everything had to be cleaned and processed to ensure that nothing would be poisonous. Although they only could afford water at this base, the men could pretend it was the drink they wanted. "Two shots of whisky, on the rocks." Two glasses of water were poured and two cubes of ice were placed into each one. The ice was frozen fruit juice; the only way they could drink the juice without running out of supplies. Walker grabbed up one glass and drank it within seconds. The frozen juice melted quickly in the warm air and walker poured the extra juice into his second glass to make the taste more sweat. Turns out the cubes were grape, his favorite flavor. The bar keeper always tried to ease the men's pain in any way he could. The second glass was taken slowly, to keep the flavor as long as he could. It would be another six hours before his next drink. His commander sat next to him, ordering a likewise mythical drink, and began to talk about business. Walker wasn't listening to him. He just made the occasional nod to show that he understood, and continued to sip his whisky.
ooo
The chief stood from his long hours of prayers and walked outside of his hut to find that his men were conducting a ceremony. This happened every night before a battle. The ceremony was based around their faith in god and was used as an instrument for his blessing. There was always dancing around a fire, a big feast from what they kill to survive, and always a prayer to guide their dinner's spirit to its rightful place. This was their way of life. They asked for God's blessing then defied him and asked for his forgiveness. Little wonder why the symmetrics rose from the dead to fight back. Their constant sins merited a test of beliefs. But their way of life could not be helped. The ground is not fertile in enough areas yet to grow crops. The few spaces of land that can grow anything are filled with plants that the animals feed on. So they must kill to survive, in more ways than one.
Chief Kobal wondered around the growing crowd as people from the entire village gathered for the feast. The prayers were soon to begin and nobody was to be absent. "The sins of the hunters were to be the sins of them all, so all must pray for forgiveness." That was what they said to anyone that questioned the ways of this ceremony. As Kobal made his way through, he took note of the men that survived the last battle. They were wearing the uniforms of the men they had killed, in honor of their brave fighting. "Even though we must fight these men to survive, we must honor those that die in battle, for they fought bravely and died like a warrior." No one questioned their motives or the fact that they were intent on killing them. All of them believed that god, to test their loyalties, resurrected the symmetrics from their deep, peaceful slumber. And if they killed the symmetrics, it would set their soul at ease again, and let them sleep for eternity.
The men and women dancing in the center were well practiced in this kind of entertainment. The only purpose this served was to keep the guests busy while everyone showed and they all prepared for the prayers. Once Kobal had sat down into his chair, everyone was ready for the opening prayers for the night's feast. They usually lasted the good part of an hour, but were different every time. The youngest, most inexperienced member would be required to write a new prayer with the same meaning as the others preceding it but in his or her own words. The women usually were better at the speeches because theirs held more emotion, while the men talked about honor and dignity. Men were warriors at heart, and nothing would ever change that. The one that read the speech this time was a woman. She had learned their native language long before she knew of the ceremony's true purpose. Her name was Autumn Sonoma. She was, in Kobal's eyes, an angel among devils. The least deformed child from the radiation.
In most of the village's eyes, she was a sign that they might finally be receiving the forgiveness that they have been praying for, freedom from the radiation, the humiliation, and the pain. She had a nearly flawless face, with the occasional imperfection on the cheek or neck. The chief was already claiming her as his own, and no one was going to challenge his right. The chief gets to pick his mate over anyone in the village, and in this case, Autumn agreed with the decision. They had known each other since they were children, both watching their fathers go out for the hunt. When Kobal became of age, he had been taken from the village for a few years to learn to hunt like his father. In this ritual, they had to stay away until the child had killed his first beast. Until then, the father teaches the son to hunt for small animals for them to survive. In this ritual, the father is not aloud to do any killing of any kind. Each person has their own style of hunting, so the other hunters knew if the rules were disobeyed. It took Kobal nearly three years to learn to hunt, and the entire time, he was thinking about Autumn. This told him she was the one. When he became chief, he let Autumn know of the marriage that he planned, and he didn't abuse his powers, rather he let her decide. He was glad he did, and they both are happier for it. The marriage was to take place a week from tomorrow.
When Autumn finished her prayer, she had people in tears about their sins. Few could do this, even amongst the women, but Autumn had a majestic voice and was very emotional with her words. She was near tears over her own prayer, and most people that night actually thought she was a gift from heaven, and Kobal wouldn't want it any other way. He was already having people making her dress for the ceremony and they had found the purest white their people had seen in decades. She had not seen the dress yet, but he knew she was going to love it. While the villagers were eating their feast and dancing to the music, they were still talking about Autumn's prayer. Meanwhile, she was talking to her friends when Kobal walked up behind her. Her friends stopped talking and looked up at Kobal, who toward over their heads with his strong frame. Autumn followed their gaze to her fiancé's eyes. "Cantrell..."
"Hello, Autumn." They stood there in each other's gaze, without thought but only feeling. A hint of red flushed over autumn's face and she looked down.
"It's been..."
"Three years, this June." She smiled in recognition of the date. He had left for the war on that date. He was still a hunter at that point, not even a warrior yet. The war had just started earlier that year. None of the chiefs knew how the symmetrics were going to attack. Their maneuvers were old and strange to them. They hadn't been used in ages and no one knew how to counter them. While fighting in the war, Kobal was separated from the rest of the group. He tried to make his way back to the village, but found himself looking at a party of symmetrics waiting to strike. He sabotaged their weaponry while they were sleeping and left back for the village to warn them. When the battle began, it was an easy victory for the evolved. The surprise party was easy pickings for the hunters while they were still figuring out that they had no offensive tools. This act earned Kobal his chief level and they allowed him to choose his own hunters. He received information that the village he lived in was destroyed in the war. Most of the villagers had escaped to another village, but they had no way to identify who made it and who didn't. It took Kobal another year to find where Autumn had fled, and one more to get there. The entire time he was gone, they were both depressed, not knowing if they would see each other again. "Far too long."
"For both of us." Autumn smiled at Cantrell. They held hands as they walked through to rivers of flesh that made up the party. Everyone they passed was commenting on their engagement in one way or another. Most of the people were looking forward to their engagement, but there were always one or more people that wished they could be in Autumn's place. They walked out of earshot of the other people and began to talk about their lives spent away from each other.