Earlier, I had thought things were going quite well: Chris had only just gone through his second belt of ammo, incoming enemy fire seemed sporadic, and it was starting to feel like we might walk out of this alive. The JSSDF were a bunch of pussies, and no one was gonna take this Cage away from the six swinging-dick meateaters who owned this piece of real estate.
Yet all it took was a single explosive projectile to fuck all of that up.
"RPG!" Chris had yelled, as he scrambled to his feet and attempted to fall backwards, having left his machine gun on the floor as he did so.
It wasn't nearly enough.
The rocket sailed through the door and impacted the catwalk next to him, the explosion sending concussion waves through the Cage and white-hot shrapnel into his entire body before enveloping him in flames.
Through the wafting smoke, I remember seeing that Chris was no longer moving… or breathing for that matter.
Mikey was the closest - he had caught some of the frag, but was still on his feet. He stepped over Chris' body, taking a quick downward glance as he did, then took his place at the door.
"Charlie-03 is down hard," he said over our comms, and crouched to see if the abandoned machine gun still worked. He shook his head in disgust, then took a knee and brought his submachine gun up. "Belt fed is down - here they come!" His MP7 began to spit rounds, sending them down the hallway towards the invaders.
The JSSDF had lost their minds, I remember thinking. I couldn't even fathom a situation where I'd deploy rocket launchers in a subterranean environment - and trust me, I'm open toa lot of things - but here they were lobbing rockets at us like they fucking meant it.
I came to the realization that the Japanese had pulled one over on us - just as they hadn't expected us to be down here, we didn't expect them to be using heavy weapons where they really shouldn't have been using them. They didn't want the base, they didn't want intel - all they wanted was us dead, and that made them unpredictable.
We kept fighting - as hard as we could, with all the ferocity that we could muster - but it was a numbers game, and they had more. The enemy's big guns were also a significant influence on the outcome of the fight.
After Chris had gone down, the boys at ground level had been systematically picked apart by heavy weapons fire. The JSSDF had walked in grenade launcher rounds on our flanking position, playing the angles game to put shells on Mikey and J; once they had been knocked out, the enemy took their time getting eyes through the door, painting a picture of our layout and putting a rocket on the other position once they had seen enough.
Masaki died in the blast, overwhelmed in much the same way that Chris was, but Ryohei was able to drag himself off the catwalk and onto the dried bakelite below, leaving a crimson streak of blood where he had crawled along the floor.
When the kid had found a nice little spot beneath the catwalk, he looked up to me as if to apologize; it's been twenty minutes since then and he hasn't blinked, staring at and past me. He's gone.
Well, so much for that plan.
Now it's just me, and Major Katsuragi and the Third Child are late.
Today is truly starting to suck. The only thing I have going for me is that these dudes still don't know what my exact position is, which really isn't much to go on.
A part of me wishes that they would just storm the room already - partly because it would be easy to pick at them as they came in, mostly because I just want to get it over with.
There is no point in delaying the inevitable.
Another JSSDF man attempts to peek the door, and I give him a single round into his plastic helmet for good measure. Seventy-seven grains of metal smash into his skull at almost three thousand feet-per-second, and he collapses back into the hallway. His booted feet are still in the threshold, but a second later they slowly begin to move out of sight as someone drags the corpse off the field.
I switch out my magazine for a full one, and add the partial to the stack next to me that has been growing for the past twenty minutes.
If they're trying to keep the doorway clear, I can only imagine that they're getting ready for the last push.
Something comes through the door - it's not a wave of enemy assaulters, or even someone risking a surreptitious peek. A lone man pivots through the doorway and aims his rocket launcher…
… right at me, I realize, as I bring my optic down and start firing. So that's why they had recovered that body. The angle of the bullet entry would give them at least a starting point to work with.
My last string of rounds punches through the rocket man's vest, destroying most of the vital organs in his upper chest, but nothing I do can stop the rocket that he had already launched towards me.
At first there is nothing, blackness - and then simply there is pain. I am hurting everywhere - but hurting means that I am alive. Feeling like shit, on the brink of death and barely able to move?
Sure. But alive is what matters. Alive means I can still fight, for as long as this heart still pumps blood.
I force my eyes open, grateful for the ballistic glasses I usually wear. They are covered in soot and cratered from shrapnel, but the protection rating held up. My eyes are still intact.
The rest of my body burns, and through the heat I can feel a slick a wetness permeating through multiple parts of uniform. I haven't felt this much blood on me in years. Not since…
No. I can't think about that. Mission comes first.
I'm lying prone, in the same position I was in before I took the blast, and I tilt my head up to survey the room.
The bodies of my team are exactly where they had been left; Ryohei's eyes are still turned up towards me. None of the JSSDF bodies had moved, either.
At the left edge of my vision, however, something is out of place.
I turn to focus, removing my ballistic glasses with my right hand to get a better view…
… and see that the Commander's son, or "Ikari Jr." as some of us had taken to calling him recently, had entered the room while I was unconscious.
He was seated against the closed door of Elevator R-20, just as Hyuuga said he would be; clad in the white button up and dress pants that most had come to associate him with, he had his knees drawn up to his chest and arms wrapped around himself. Even from up here, I could see his body twitch as he sobbed quietly.
Major Katsuragi was nowhere to be seen, but as long as Ikari Jr. was still breathing, he could get into the fight.
Come on, kid. Get in the robot...