Chapter 8: War Dog Company!
Vignette looked behind her worriedly. Even though Gabriel had a powered exoskeleton on, she was still moving rather slowly and with heavy breaths.
She could hear wheezing, like air escaping a balloon.
"Gabriel!," Vignette scolded as she rushed over to give her someone to lean on. "I told you not to overexert yourself!"
Gabriel responded with a painful cough, her back convulsing in an attempt to clear out the plastic gunk in her lungs. More dribbles of blood escaped her mouth this time, but she stood up as she wiped her mouth clean.
"I'm fine...!," she sputtered, spitting on the ground. "Just...need a smoke..."
Vignette felt her eyes twitch after she clearly heard the loli mutter under her breath that she needed a cigarette. Gabriel nonchalantly walked past the concerned demon, who was stood there in thought. The only thing that she wanted first and foremost, was to heal Gabriel's lungs and prevent her from essentially drowning in her blood. She shivered, imagining large pus-filled sacks forming around plastic lodged in delicate alveoli...
"No!," she yelled to herself. "We'll find this mech, ride it to Spirit and get some medicine! There's no need to be worried Vignette!"
After approximately two hours of walking, the trio had stopped just within eye distance of the abandoned machine. They laid down on the elevated road, looking intently behind rubble and run-down cars, and noticed something moving in the distance. Raphiel regretted leaving her sniper rifle behind at base, as she looked down the holographic sights of her assault rifle. She could barely make out four individuals around the mech, one of them was rummaging around in its chassis.
"Looks like they're fixing it," Raphiel observed. "So it was broken...how good for us."
"Hey...you really okay with this?," Gabriel hesitantly asked. "We would basically be robbing them..."
Both Raphiel and Vignette were quiet for a while.
"What do you think we should do, Gabriel...Vignette?," Raphiel asked quietly. "I...I don't want to be the bad one here..."
"I think we should talk to them," Gabriel stated coolly. "Work out some kind of deal."
"What...?! And if it goes wrong? Let's get the drop on them now!," Vignette argued.
"Vignette...they don't look like bad people."
"Gab! Your medicine!," Vignette growled as she bared her teeth.
Gabriel sighed, turning her head away from Vignette. "This again...you can't use my...'condition'...to justify the easy murder of human beings!"
Both Raphiel and Vignette blinked, surprised at her reasonable argument. Although Vignette was quick to shoot a rebuttal, believing that she wasn't using Gabriel to kill needlessly, nor that killing was easy for her.
"I-I'm not!," she argued, raising her voice slightly. "I'm just saying that if we talked to these guys..."
She took a glance at their equipment. They wore the same exoskeletons as Gabriel, although they looked much more up-to-spec based off their clean coats of paint. Dangling off their vests were an array of cylindrical grenades on the top, and magazines on the bottom. It looked like they hadn't seen battle for months, and were rearing to dump lead into any moving target.
"...they would probably mow us down. So why not increase our chances of winning by surprising them? One neat bullet from each of us."
Gabriel understood that at their position, they had no bargaining power whatsoever. They were in no position to make any negotiations, as they had nothing to offer. A terrible scenario crossed her mind at that thought, but she quickly wiped it from her mind.
"Yeah. Yeah...you're right," Gabriel muttered, looking down her sights again.
The trio stared at the men in the distance for a while.
"Well...we better act quickly," Raphiel fretted. "Looks like they're almost done with the repairs. We'll have another gun to contend with in a moment." She flicked the safety off with her thumb, and Vignette followed.
"Don't miss now..."
"No...!," Gabriel thought as she watched them line up their sights. "God...after everything I've done for people...after all the bullet wounds I've patched up...here you are, undoing my fucking work Vignette!"
"This isn't right. They have no insignia. They don't look one bit like the enemy we're fighting."
"I can't let you do that."
Gabriel glared harshly at the two girls, and they returned the same glare.
"Gab! Line up your sights!," Vignette commanded, pushing the battle rifle back under her shoulder. "They're almost-"
"They are not our enemy. They're innocent."
Vignette felt her face flush with anger. Her eyebrows curled into a harsh 'V' shape and she bared her fangs at Gabriel, who stood up quickly and paced back four steps away from them. Vignette's eyes widened, and she immediately realised what Gabriel was about to do.
"Don't. You. Dare."
Gabriel felt a tang of remorse, before she slowly began walking in the direction of the armed group.
"GAB!...fucking hell!," Vignette swore under her breath as she trained her sights on them. She knew she couldn't stop the reckless girl from changing her mind. "I swear to Lucifer himself, if you die here...!"
"Vignette," Gabriel thought to herself as she walked. "I don't usually hope for this but...I hope you're praying for me."
Gabriel removed her magazine from her battle rifle, racked the bullet out of its chamber and let the gun hang on her side. She slowly raised her hands digits facing out towards the group as they raised their weapons towards her.
"Oh God...," she nervously yelled. "...f-fuck...!"
She tensed in preparation for the hail of bullets about to penetrate her body. But she opened her eyes, and they were all looking at her, albeit, through their holographic sights. They didn't have that familiar look to their faces when they were about to kill someone...that familiar anger.
"That's far enough," she heard. Gabriel froze in place, her palms locked outwards. "Who are you?"
Gabriel gulped. "P-P-Private T-Tenma White, from the JSDF Medical Unit, stationed in Springs Base-"
"Whaddya want?," the man standing on the mech asked with a gruff holler. Some of the soldiers slowly lowered their rifle, noticing that the small girl in front of them didn't have a magazine in her weapon.
Gabriel let out a small nervous cough. "The...the Oculus under you!"
They let out small chuckles towards each other. "Oh yeah? Why the fuck should we give you that?," the man asked. He didn't sound aggressive per say; it was as if he was cracking jokes and shooting the shit with his friends.
"To annihilate the Ares soldiers who had recently invaded our base," she replied, taking a cautious step towards the group. They didn't react to it.
"Oh. I fucking hate those cunts," he chuckled, adjusting his hat. The three soldiers on the ground slightly nodded and lowered their eyebrows. "Fucked us over more than enough times."
"If you don't mind me asking...," Gabriel politely asked. "Are you JSDF? I don't see any insignia."
"Huh?"
He let out a triumphant low chuckle, and placed his hands on his hips. "Nah love. We're with War Dog Company! Ain't no fuckin'...bureaucracy gonna control us!"
Gabriel laughed nervously with him, not knowing how to respond. He jumped off the mech.
"What? You've never heard of us?," he asked, sounding mock-offended. Gabriel shook her head, curiously raising her eyebrow. Her nervousness was easing up a little, which let her form her thoughts clearer. Meanwhile, Vignette and Raphiel saw that they were interacting peacefully and sighed in relief, but still kept their fingers on triggers.
"Well, to put it simply Private Tenma: we sell war scrap to the highest bidder. Fucking genius, ain't it?"
"I see. But...the Oculus?"
"A little bit of elbow grease and this baby'll be roaring in no time! Imagine how much they'll pay for a fucking working silverback!"
Gabriel slightly slumped her shoulders. "I...I understand. I'm assuming using it one last time will be out of the question then?"
"Fuckin' a right Tenma." He slapped the machine and smiled. "As much as we wanna blast Ares cunts away, we'll get fucking fired if we damage hardware like this. Fraid' I can't help you. Unless you wanna fight for it."
"Yeah...I'd rather not," she emphasized, letting her hands fall by her sides. She looked away in discomfort and the man shot her a sympathetic look. He threw the wrench into the toolbox and leaned against the robot with his arms crossed.
"Where's your squad doc?," he asked. "Small girl like you shouldn't be wanderin' around a battlefield."
Gabriel covered her mouth as she suddenly let out a guttural cough. The company noticed the blood on her hands as she let them fall to her sides.
"If...if you help me...!," she exclaimed weakly. "I'll be indebted to you! I'll pay you far more than the price of what this mech costs!"
"You can make more than five hundred thousand dollars?," one soldier asked shrewdly.
"If I clear our base and make it back alive to Spirit base, in the south, then I can pay you five times what this is worth. JSDF needs that base, and they'll pay out their ass for it," she explained with open hands and gestures.
"Silverback's got enough charge for one trip," another soldier said. "We can kit it out with the ammo we found but...that ammo's worth a lot man."
Gabriel looked at the company confidently. "It's your gamble. Either sell this and make a small five hundred...or use it to make a hell of a lot more."
They spoke softly to one another, thoroughly considering her deal, playing scenarios in their head for possible tricks or loopholes.
"How big is Springs Base again?," the man (who seemed to be the leader) asked. "Wanna know how much ammo we're gonna lay down."
Gabriel bit her lip and tried to make the attack as easy and appealing as possible. "Around...four or five football fields long."
This incited a groan and noises of protest from the company. The minigun would sooner overheat before they could clear an area that large.
"B-But imagine how much you'll get paid! I mean, it'll certainly be good PR for your company...and-and you can even make up some bullshit story! Private White was trapped in Springs Base when suddenly you appear and save the day!"
Everyone shrugged and nodded at each other. They held a look of suppressed excitement on their faces, presumably because they could finally get their overpowered guns hot.
"If we do this," the man grunted, stepping closer to Gabriel. "I need to know exactly what we're gonna get out of it, and that you understand what'll happen to you or your squad if we don't."
Gabriel responded with a simple 'ok'.
"Alright then." The two sat down on the dusty concrete and shook hands. "Name's Luca."
AN: Sorry for the slow update! Been busy with music production and all. Don't worry I won't abandon this fic anytime soon. I quite enjoy watching how Gabriel slowly progresses with each difficult choice, and how her relationship with Vignette changes. I also have a loooot of cool villains and problems for her to face! Ooh..and the cool futuristic tech that she'll have to use to beat them?! Fucking amazing! And yes, this reality will contain tech not in our current military, but you know. Wars incentivise companies to develop their weapons and technology pretty well so this won't be that far fetched. Besides, I love imagining Gabriel in a futuristic exosuit like the one in advanced warfare or like deviantart's demongirl289/art/Anime-girl-with-gun-757447212 (which was kinda the main inspiration for the whole exoskeleton idea).
Anyways, leave a review or don't, whatever. Have a good day and I'll try to write frequently!
