Chapter 13 - You've Dug Your Grave...
Depending on how it gets there, dirt in the mouth often tastes like how you earned it. After a hard day's training, it tasted of triumph and hard won effort. After a tough fight, it reminded you of accomplishment and how close you came to losing. And sometimes, it just tastes like dirt.
In the crater where the New Hope Research Facility used to be, the dirt was very fine and black. It was comprised of the rock and limestone that remained below the surface, pulverized and added to the metal and composites used around New Hope, and then scorched black by the friction of the blast. It was almost like black sand, most often seen after a volcanic eruption. Considering the outcome, a volcano was too far off.
But as Naruto lay face down in the bottom of a crater, clad in nothing but torn blue pants, the dirt tasted like shame. The shame and agony of knowing that he had been responsible for the deaths of his friends. A weaker man would blame Madara, the Sharingan eye, or maybe even Kabuto for putting the whole thing together. But Naruto knew: he was to blame. If he had ended the Uchiha patriarch when he'd had the chance, Ino would still be alive. The others wouldn't have had to watch him tear her throat out with his own teeth. His mercy had been their end. It all came down to his greatest failure. There was no consolation on Sera that could possibly reconcile the truth.
It was his fault.
In his training to control the Nine Tails, Naruto had worked to control his negative emotions: rage, grief, loneliness, and hatred. But as he sat in the bitter remains of his former prison, with a stolen eye in his head and the knowledge that he had killed the people he had sworn to protect, there was no training for that. Nothing to hold back the bitter anger, the all consuming regret and how much he hated that damned Sharingan eye.
With a groan, he slowly got an arm underneath himself and lifted up, a grimace of agony on his face as his muscles worked for the first time in several years. For someone used to constant training, atrophy was a bitch. Every movement required more effort than usual, and his muscles flared in protest at such a simple movement as turning over to lie on his back. The black grains clung to him, covering him in dirt and driving the sand on his back into his skin. The scorch had hardened the little grains of sand, and it was like a million pinpricks into his back, exacerbated by the pain in his muscles.
He didn't care.
Naruto had done so many impossible things. He had fought off people far stronger than him on guts and determination alone. He had earned the adoration of a people that years ago had called for his execution. He had traveled across the stars and landed on another planet, and participated in a battle that was heralded as legendary. But in the wake of the revelation, the knowledge, the knowing that he had slain the very people that he had grown up with, fought beside, and supported since before their Genin days, there wasn't a single success that mattered. None of it mattered.
As he wallowed in his despair, a single image came to mind: Samantha, seventeen and showing him a storage seal that she had created all by herself. His pained expression slowly faded as his thoughts turned from his betrayal to the little girl he had raised since her birth. No matter what he had done in the past, she was still out there somewhere. Sam had accepted him without question, even after she became old enough to grasp that he wasn't her real father. His crimes against his friends were his own, but he had a duty to Samantha. The two weren't mutually exclusive.
With a sigh, Naruto heaved himself into a seated position, his muscles igniting in protest. Ignoring the pain, Naruto slowly managed to stand, his bare feet scraping the blackened grains of sand as he stood up. All around him, the signs of his enraged attack were visible. The facility he had spent the last three years in had been completely eradicated. The few parts that were thrown clear in the explosion dotted the landscape, scraps of metal and plates of armor in various shapes and sizes sticking out of the ground or lying flat. What wasn't thrown clear had been disintegrated, converted into the black ash that he stood upon. A deep crater sunk into the ground where he stood, and the trees all around the newly made clearing were blown back, leaning away from him as if they knew his power.
A cold wind danced across his shoulder, and Naruto shivered. His cloak had many seals that protected it from harm, but that didn't negate the forces enacted upon it. The long flowing garment was likely in a tree somewhere. Naruto reached out to the Hirashin seal inscribed within the cloak, but thought better of it. He could get a general feeling of where the cloak was, and he needed to exercise his weakened muscles. The seal pulled him south like a compass, and he slowly trudged out of the crater and towards where he thought his coat could be.
Each step was painful, but only in the movement. His feet had been toughened by nearly a century of pounding ground, rock, and wood into rubble. Even a three year long soak in a nutrient bath had failed to tenderize the bottoms of his feet as he dragged himself into the woods. The evergreen pines sparsely dotted the wood, but there were enough of them for a decent brown bedding of fallen needles to soften his steps. Naruto walked in near silence, with little more than the echoing wind through the branches to accompany him. The feeling from his Hirashin seal grew stronger, and soon he found himself at the base of a large tree, a familiar fluttering coat stuck in its branches. Naruto stepped forward and channeled his chakra, using the energy to adhere his hands to the trunk of the tree. It took some calibration before he could get the right amount, another testament to the time he spent in stasis, but soon he was crawling up the tree like a salamander. The branches crawled by as he did, and soon the fluttering coat was in his grasp. Naruto dropped from the branches with his prize, wrapping the familiar cloth around his shoulders. It fit a little more loosely than it had the last time he had worn it, but its comforting weight helped put his troubled mind at ease.
After pulling a change of clothes from his storage scroll and probably scaring off all wildlife, Naruto was dressed in his flak vest, blue shirt and pants, and wrapped shinobi sandals once more. He started to put his headband on to complete the look, but the Konoha insignia made him pause. Naruto stared down at the headband, his own troubled reflection looking back at him as he contemplated wearing it. He had acquired something of a beard in his stasis, and blonde stubble traced his jawline and chin. His memories still burned with the deaths of Ino and the others, and right now...putting on the headband didn't seem right. He folded the cloth around the metal, giving the polished plate a few rubs with his fingers, then stashed it in his pocket for later. Without the headband, his hair hung down freely, and it had grown during his time in the tank. A Hirashin kunai and some wind chakra handled the more rebellious strands, but he still had a mop of shaggy blonde hair to contend with. Once he was dressed, shaved, and trimmed, Naruto focused on another Hirashin seal.
Sam's.
The day she had been taken, he had tried to flash to her side, but for some reason it hadn't worked. The fact that his father's famous jutsu had failed had given Naruto pause, but an investigation into Sam's room had revealed the answer. A plethora of storage seal blueprints and some amateur tattoo needles had revealed exactly why his seal had failed to work. In her eagerness to apply her own seal, Sam had tattooed her storage matrix over his more complex Hirashin network. Because her chakra was more natural to her body than his, the storage seal had canceled out the Hirashin's abilities. His seal was still present on her, but the storage seal sapped the chakra needed to give Naruto a destination. Without intending to, Sam had effectively cut herself off from her father and his world traveling technique, though he still had a vague idea of which direction she was in. Her tampering irritated Naruto, but he was also proud that she had taken the initiative and applied her own seal completely without his help. The lack of supervision was concerning, as trapping objects into someone's very own pocket dimension had an entire book listing the things that could go wrong, but she still had an arm. That meant that, despite the difficulty and danger present in inscribing a storage seal, Sam had pulled it off.
There were several other seals that he could flash to, but Naruto was in no state to go back to the COG. Chairman Dalyell had a lot to answer to, but Naruto would need to train first to regain the mastery over his body. His muscles ached, and his chakra control was beneath what he considered to be acceptable. Naruto decided to take a week or two to build himself back up, as well as come to terms with his new past. The taste of Ino's blood in his mouth was still too prominent.
Naruto shook his head to clear his thoughts and leaped up into a tree, climbing it with some effort as he scaled its branches in jumps. Once he reached the top of the canopy, the blonde shinobi glanced around in all directions. When he faced towards the west, he gasped in shock.
There had been a small city near New Hope, likely where the secret research facility had gotten its supplies. Even though New Hope sat atop a mountain, it required another population center to supply it with food, lodging, and other such needs that couldn't come from the local area. The nearby town had been small and discreet, numbering at roughly fifteen thousand people. In his testing while at New Hope, one of the security guards had been loose lipped enough to talk about the town. It had been called Landown, an homage to its founder.
Where buildings and roads used to be, there was nothing but an enormous crater. Huge stretches of land had been torn up as if by a giant garden trowel, digging furrows miles wide into the dirt and eradicating everything. There were no trees, cars, or anything near what looked like ground zero for a bomb detonation. There were few weapons that held such destructive power, but Naruto could think of one.
The Hammer of Dawn had been deployed. There was no other weapon available to the COG or the UIR that could cause such widespread destruction. He and Adam had spoken about it on several occasions, but the scientist had never been able to get the damned thing right. As Naruto gazed across the widespread destruction, he came the conclusion that Adam had finally succeeded in getting the Hammer off the ground. Whatever could have justified the use of such a powerful tool of destruction, Naruto knew that the Sera he was looking at was not the one he had left behind. Just prior to his prolonged stasis, the UIR had surrendered and peace had crossed Sera for the first time in nearly a century. But Naruto could see that clearly something had happened to upend that peace. He gazed upon the face of war. And war never changes.
Four days. Naruto thought. Four days, and I head for Tyrus. Naruto didn't know what had happened, but he had a feeling that the Chairman would have the answers he needed. Once he got the full story, vengeance could come later. Despite giving Sasuke so much Hell about pursuing revenge, Naruto couldn't fight the urge to tear everyone in the COG's command structure apart. Losing his daughter and getting locked into a test tube for years did that to a guy.
Naruto dropped down from his perch and jogged back to the crater where New Hope used to be. He slid down into the center and pulled out a Hirashin kunai. With practiced ease and a little wind chakra, he stabbed the blade deep into the compacted dirt until the handle and ring were the only things showing. A knife in the middle of a crater was an odd thing, but there were perhaps only two people on the planet that knew the significance of his kunai. And if he knew Sam, she was likely searching for him. In the event that she found New Hope after he left, she would have a functioning Hirashin seal to summon him to her location. Naruto's mind flashed through the images of Landown's destruction, and the possibility that Sam was dead floated through his mind like a ghost. The shinobi shook his head at that; it required a living person to power his seals. Just because she had overwritten it, Sam's seal still had enough juice to give him a guess on her position. His little girl was alive, and until he was back up to full strength, she would do fine without him. Naruto climbed back out of the pit and set about procuring targets. A few felled trees later, and he had plenty of stumps and logs to smash into oblivion as he brought his body back under his own control.
When he was finished here, Naruto would find out what happened. Depending on what he discovered, it was likely that he was going to kill someone.
Sam's head wound had taken a miraculous six days to heal, much to the surprise of her doctors. In that time, hazy memories of her squad sitting around a hospital bed were all that Sam could recall. Her memory flitted between a room of doctors and nurses, all of Lima Squad hovering over her, and most often the sight of Baird sitting next to her, a gloved hand on her bed as he slept. She had clearly woken up several times, but the Kashkuri woman couldn't recall an actual conscious conversation other than the one she had shared with Hoffman. She vaguely recalled slapping Baird, but for the life of her the squad leader couldn't remember why. Still, her guys had survived. To Hell with the footage, the only thing Sam cared about was her squad making it out alive.
Now she sat, as disgruntled as the hospital receptionist in front of her, eagerly waiting to be discharged from the starched white Hell of the infirmary. While the petite brunette in front of her typed furiously at her computer terminal without making eye contact, the two women engaged in a contest of whose scowl was more fearsome. Interestingly enough, there was no clear winner. Once she was cleared and all the paperwork handled – the bitch even tried to give her a paper cut – Sam left the infirmary in as much of a rush as she dared. With all of her armor in a rucksack and her Lancer with Baird, Sam left the hospital and went to CIC to check in with control. It was in part to let them know that Lima was back in the rotation, and also to check in on Anya and Hoffman. Sam and Anya had only hung out a few times, but being the only female Gears in a bar between rotations made women stick together. Anya was spoken for, and Sam had more fun fighting off suitors than entertaining them. It had led to a friendly camaraderie that caused Sam to check in on the blonde CIC operator whenever she was around.
The CIC in Ephyra was headquartered in the upper floors of a prewar bank, and boasted a large antenna at the roof. Reinforced doors and redundant security checkpoints were already built in, and the army had taken full advantage of the building's layout. Communication was a vital part of any battle, and the CIC was a major hard point. If communications went down, the Gears would die in a chaotic scramble.
Sam made her way past the administrative areas and up several stairs to the CIC proper, where three large rooms originally designed for stock trading had been converted into a functional menagerie of vid screens, computer terminals, and chairs full of operators with headsets. Several channels were run through the room to prevent Gears and operators talking over each other, and each operator had several squads to look out for. At times, the room was quiet, with the exception of hushed and calm communications as routine patrols made their rounds. Other times, the room was a cacophony of radio chatter and camera feeds, with Gears shouting and dying on the outside while the operators struggled to direct them. The atmosphere could change in an instant, and required the people manning the radio to be constantly vigilant. A quick run through the three OPS rooms told Sam that Anya wasn't there, so she had two other locations to search: the barracks, and Hoffman's office. Anya pulled all kinds of crazy shifts, but there was no way she'd be clocking out at 1000 hours. With that in mind, Sam went back to the stairs and walked up one more floor. The office of Colonel Hoffman and three desks worth of boot lickers (if you heard him say it) took up much of the twelfth floor, and the adjutants knew better than to impede Sgt. Samantha Byrne. She pushed through the double doors to see Hoffman and Anya looking over a map, which judging by the lines radiating outward from two points was likely a mountain range. When she walked in, she noticed that Hoffman's soft cap was crinkled in his hand instead of sitting on his bald head. That didn't bode well.
"Colonel, Lieutenant? Sgt. Byrne back on duty." She said with a salute. Hoffman growled and waved her off, and Anya returned the salute for ceremony's sake. The blonde woman waved her over to the map while Hoffman grabbed another cup that that nasty instant coffee.
"We're glad you're back up, Sam. To be honest, we thought you were would be out for weeks." Anya said incredulously. Sam just shrugged and sat her ruck down, leaning the bag against Hoffman's desk.
"It almost took me one. Our doctors are good, and I don't think it was as bad as we first assumed." That, and she suspected that an active chakra network did wonders for the healing process. "Either way, I don't remember much from this past week. You two mind filling me in?" Hoffman and Anya exchanged looks. Judging by how antsy Hoffman was, they were thinking of something that made him visibly uncomfortable.
"Do you remember that little chat we had?" He asked gruffly. Sam scratched her head, near where her bandages had been a day prior, and nodded uncertainly.
"I remember what you said about Baird, and I think I slapped him one time, but everything else is just a blur." Sam said with a shrug. "And no, I don't want to talk about him right now."
Anya and Hoffman both looked away and whistled innocently when she said this. Apparently, her confused friendship with the blonde mouth on her squad had been a topic of conversation between Anya and Victor, but they would let it rest for her sake.
"Well, we've got a new mission when Lima is ready. And you're going to want to take it, Sam." Hoffman said seriously. Cocking a brow, the Kashkuri woman took a closer look at the map on the table. It was of the mountainous region to the northwest, near Landown. Or at least, what was left of Landown. The area had been one of the Hammer targets, so it was likely little more than slag and glass. Farther up the mountain, judging by the jagged lines radiating outward, a square with the name 'New Hope' had been circled in red.
"Chairman Prescott declassified a research facility a few days ago, while you were in the infirmary." Hoffman nearly spat the word 'declassified'; it was just another way of saying that the Chairman had lied about something and decided to come clean about it. "We've reason to believe that there is a major asset out there that could change the tide of the war."
"Approximately five days ago, the facility's artificial caretaker ended radio silence and transmitted an emergency signal. Halfway through the data burst, all contact was lost. We must assume that the communications relay was knocked out, or that the facility was destroyed. So far, cloud cover and satellite passes have prevented us from getting a look at the area with the Hammer." Anya informed. She traced a jagged line across the map, several main highways leading away from the Jacinto plateau towards Landown. "Because of the ash coverage, most vehicles stall out and get choked on the debris. Recommendation is to go it on foot, or have Cpl. Baird find a way to run a combustion engine with no oxygen." Anya said the last bit half seriously, but they all knew that if the problem annoyed him enough, Damon Baird would find some way to fix it. Particularly if Sam told him to do it.
"I think he can find a way. Even if we have to stop every ten miles or so, a Packhorse or 'Dill would make things much easier on us. It would take us a week to make that run on foot." Sam said as she followed the line, memorizing the route. Take seventy two for thirty klicks, merge over onto four forty, then follow the country road for a ways. Considering its distance from the city, a 'Dill would be preferred. The parkways would likely be covered with cars, the dead efforts of people that had failed to make it to Jacinto in time. The prospect of literally rolling over the dead didn't sit well with her, but they had a mission to complete. And speaking of the mission...
"So, what exactly is so important that we have to drop everything and haul ass out there? Another week, and the air will be clear enough for Ravens." Sam asked, looked from Anya to Hoffman. The bald colonel didn't meet her gaze, and he heaved a heavy sigh before pulling a thick manila envelope from his drawer. When he dropped it onto the desk with an audible thunk, the words stenciled in red ink across the front made Sam's breath catch.
Project Dawnbringer.
It had been the code name for Naruto, and the directive that had ordered her kidnapping in the first place. It had been two, nearly three whole years of combing every database, every questionable shipping manifest, and interrogating every clerk that so much as thought they remembered the name. It had been a time of frustration and a lot of fruitless effort, and now she had the lead to follow.
"It's him, Sam." Hoffman said heavily. "It's Naruto."
She was out the door before anyone could say any more, her ruck slung across her back with reckless abandon.
The garage was Damon's favorite place to be. He preferred the sound of socket wrenches and impact hammers to useless talk, and often lost himself in the careful maintenance of one machine or another. Currently, he was chest deep in the engine compartment of his favorite Armadillo, with a lot of the exhaust pipes disconnected and in his hands. When it was properly refined, Imulsion burned cleanly – like, REALLY cleanly – but anything else that came in through the intake would cake the exhaust pipes and clog up the whole system. Once enough got backed up in the pipe, the exhaust would be trapped into the engine. After that, you only had so much time before the engine sputtered and died.
"Really gotta find some way to filter this crap out better." He muttered to himself. A mesh grating came to mind, but they would still have to stop and clear it every now and then, or the intake wouldn't get any air. As he reconnected the clean parts and gathered his tools, he set himself in to reassemble the exhaust couplings. A stray fleck of ash streamed in from outside and rested on his cheek. Baird wiped it away, but a portion of it mingled with the sweat from his brow and set a dark gray streak across his face. As soon as the grainy substance smeared, he groaned. It was one thing to get dirty on the job, but another entirely when he realized that the ash on his face was likely 70% murdered COG citizen.
Trying not to think about it, Baird reset the restraining bolts – all eight of them – and tightened them into place with his socket wrench. Once that was in place, he stood up and stretched, the long time spent hunched inside of an engine compartment threatening to cramp his muscles. When he stopped stretching, Baird slid his goggles back on top of his head and clambered out of the 'Dill and onto the ground. The engine compartment was on the rear of the 'Dill, both to make exhaust disposal more efficient and to protect the vehicle's critical components in the event of a firefight.
Baird was wearing an oil-stained set of blue coveralls, with several tools sticking out of various pockets at hip and calf level, as well as a small utility belt with the smaller, more precise instruments inside. He also wore a blue ball cap with its bill facing backwards. The ash stain wasn't the only dark smear on his face, though a wet towel quickly set that right. Once he had cleaned his face off, Baird closed the engine compartment and walked around to the front of the 'Dill, the hatch open to allow access to the controls. He inserted the command key and pressed the ignition, hoping against hope that the problem was fixed. To his great relief instead of the harsh, sputtering cough that had erupted from the engine ever since Delta squad had brought the 'Dill back from patrol, the engine started right up and purred as gently as it could. Baird listened to it for any more discrepancies for a few moments more, then cut the engine and climbed out.
Job done. Baird congratulated himself, and turned to the sink to start rinsing his arms of the oil and tar earned from clearing the exhaust system. As he scrubbed vigorously to remove the stains on his skin, he failed to notice the quick paced steps behind him until there were two firm taps on his shoulder. Still scrubbing, Baird turned his head to see Sam standing in front of him in full armor, panting slightly with a serious look on her face.
"Sam? What's wrong? And when did they let you out of the hospital?" Baird asked as he quickly dried his hands. Sam shook her head, not trusting her voice for the moment, and motioned hurriedly toward the barracks. A worried frown setting onto his face, Baird followed Sam as she half jogged, half sprinted to the squad bay, nearly plowing over two other Gears much larger than her as they exited the door. Once there, she quickly summarized everything that Anya and Hoffman had told her, while she also threw on her armor. Baird just stood there next to her as she talked, and by the end of the tale Sam was in full kit and Baird was wearing a dumbfounded expression and a mechanic's outfit.
"What are you waiting for, you git? Put your gear on!" Sam said impatiently. To her irritation, Baird didn't move. The blonde man crossed his arms and frowned, not budging from his spot.
"You want us to go charging off after a guy that – let's face it – has been a prisoner of the COG since before the Locust showed up." Sam nodded vigorously. Baird sighed and held up a second finger.
"And, you're expecting him to not attack us on the assumption that he will recognize you – the only person in the COG besides grumpy old Hoffman that he doesn't hate – and not turn us into blood filled jelly bags bleeding on the ground." Baird said with a cocked brow. Sam growled and shook her head vigorously.
"He'll know it's me. You think the deadliest man on the planet doesn't have a way to communicate?" She didn't exactly roll up her sleeve to show him the seal – the one that she had foolishly covered up with a storage matrix before she had reached the stage of her training about conflicting matrices. But hey, can't make an omelet without threatening to warp space and time, or something along those lines. Baird didn't seem convinced.
"Even so, what's he going to think when he finds out that you've joined the army? The COG is definitely going to be at the top of his shit list." As Baird spoke, he changed out of his coveralls and threw his hat into a footlocker, revealing a hilarious pair of heart print boxers that in another conversation would had sent Sam rolling on the floor with laughter.
"Dad's not an idiot; he knows chain of command. At the very least, he'll be after the guys on the ground, and the leadership. Since Chairman Dalyell has been dead for over a year now..." Sam trailed off with a shrug. Baird scratched the stubble gathering at his chin, his gaze hooded and away from Sam's eyes. Without regaining eye contact, Baird changed into the fatigues worn underneath the armor all Gears wore, but was slow to strap on the plates.
"Sam..." She knew that tone: Baird didn't agree with something, and for some reason he held off on the usual sardonic attitude he held in reserve for everyone else. Everyone but her. "We need to do this carefully. If we do this wrong..." Sam growled in frustration and assisted Baird in strapping the chest plate into place, jerking roughly on the strap to tighten the armor. Baird grunted in response as she did so, and stepped away to prevent further tampering from his irritated squad leader.
"You can't just ignore this, Baird." She said with gritted teeth. "I've been looking for him for three years, I'm not backing down because you guys are getting skittish."
"Skittish is not quite what I would describe here. We are well beyond skittish at this point. Fearful? Maybe. We're probably closer to terror at this point." Baird placed his hands on Sam's shoulders. "He was screwed over by the people that were in charge before. Even if he recognizes that the grunts lower down aren't responsible for the orders from on high, he can't just let something like this go. Dalyell may have put him where he is now, but Prescott made the decision to keep him on ice. I know the guy is an asshole, but we really can't afford to lose the Chairman. Can you guarantee that he wouldn't take out Prescott?" Sam opened her mouth for a rebuttal, but Baird's words set in before the words could leave her lips. The stories Naruto had spoken of during her childhood came to mind. Even in his adolescence, Naruto had been deposing and killing tyrannical despots and dictators. While Prescott's rule was both necessary and benevolent, deploying a weapon of mass destruction on most of the planet wouldn't earn him any points in Naruto's book. Sadly, Baird had something of a point.
"Okay." Sam sighed exasperatedly. "So how do we play this?" Baird took his hands off of her shoulders and pointed toward the CIC building.
"Go back up there. Get with Anya and Hoffman, and put a plan together. I'll go find Pad and Cole and meet you there." Baird patted her cheek. "We'll fix this, boss lady. We just have to do it right."
Sam nodded, and walked back out the door in as controlled of a manner as she could. Baird watched her go for a moment, then frowned as he tried to think of where the other guys in Lima Squad would be. Pad had always been a bit of a loner, and his preference as a sniper meant he'd likely be somewhere near the perimeter of the city. Cole was a social animal, and would likely either be at the bar or somewhere in the civilian residential areas. Because it was easier to a find a mountain of an ex-thrashball player than a reclusive sniper, Baird headed for the first place he expected to find his monstrous teammate: the Grinding Gear.
The Grinding Gear had been one hell of a dive bar before Emergence Day, home to Ephyra's scum, prostitutes, and bar patrons too poor to attend to any of the more honest and classy establishments. After Emergence Day, the Grinding Gear found itself smack dab in the middle of the army's main base. The usual customers gave way to a continuous tidal wave of Gears coming to drink away the horror and loss of fighting a war of extinction against humanoid monsters. If you wanted to find the life of the party, he was probably stopping by the Grinding Gear to rescue a friend from a bar fight. While Baird had no particular phobia of tall buildings, going into an area full of drunken soldiers when you have a reputation for being a total ass tended to be a bad move. That being said, it wasn't likely that Cole had his radio on.
The Grinding Gear was a small building nestled underneath an overpass, with a bright red neon sign. The sign depicted two cogs spinning against each other, sparks flying from the meeting. In the days before the Locust, it was a joke about the hypocrisies of bureaucratic government agencies and the like. Today, it was symbol of how tough it was to be a Gear. With the world and its monsters out to get them, the Gears were just as good at destroying themselves. Guilt and nightmares plagued the men that returned from the fight, and not even cheerful camaraderie among their brethren could bring them out of their funk. When Baird opened the door, a thick wave of smoke and body odor hit him in the face. Baird had utilized the new chainsaw bayonets more than once, so the smell of tobacco and sweaty bodies did little to wrinkle his nose.
The bar was sitting right next to the door, so that the patrons could sit without their backs to the door. It had been an arrangement meant to see law enforcement entering the business, and now it was a layout that provided reaction time against the Locust. However, Baird figured that if the grubs ever punched deep enough into COG territory to storm the Grinding Gear, they were already fucked anyway. The dim lighting gave off a burning, smoky air, exacerbated by the patrons that blatantly ignored the no smoking rule. Many squads stuck together and nursed their drinks in peace, closing ranks and sharing stories and comfort in tightly knit groups. That being said, any Gear could walk into a cluster and be welcomed, with few exceptions. Unfortunately, the Mechanic with the Mouth was one of those exceptions. Baird had enjoyed several conversations with many Gears, and his caustic attitude had earned him a reputation with even more. As such, the sight of a blonde Gear crazy enough to go without a helmet and always carrying a wrench made quite a few people irritated.
A loud guffaw attracted Baird's attention from the hooded glares of his fellow Gears, and he turned toward the back corner to see Cole standing over a table full of soldiers. The large man slapped the table in his mirth, nearly sending everyone's drinks flying as he reveled in whatever joke had been told. The guys seated at the booth were laughing as well, though some paused to make sure that their beers weren't thrown. Baird made his way around the tables crowded with Gears and the occasional civilian, until he found himself at Cole's elbow. He tapped the larger man on the shoulder, and Cole turned to look at him.
"Come on, Cole. We got a mission to suit up for." Baird said, pointing a thumb towards the door for emphasis. Cole chuckled a little bit more.
"Alright, Damon. Just give me a second to say goodbye to the fellas." While Cole turned around a bid his friends a good day, Baird stood by and watched. Cole was huge: there was no overstating just how big and powerful he was. And it wasn't just the man's size that set people at ease. Cole's infectious enthusiasm bled over from his time playing for the Cougars, and no matter how bad things got he always brought some life into the fray. Cole just radiated good cheer and an unstoppable smile. Even if his whole squad was gunned down, seeing Cole carving through grubs and firing with that unshakable bravado made you believe that you could do anything. It was how the Cole Train worked, and it was why so many people liked him.
A tap on Baird's shoulder brought him out of his thoughts, and he was again reminded that a lot of people disliked him. Predominantly because the guy's knuckles tasted like ash. The punch in the mouth sent Baird reeling, but Sam had hit him harder than that. When he regained his senses, he saw two Gears standing away from him out of their chairs, one of them cocking a fist back for another hit. Baird brought his arms up to guard his head and sidestepped the next blow, then let Asshole's face have it with two lightning quick jabs. Jerk Off, the buddy, tried to grab Baird, but the blonde danced out of his reach and pushed him out of the way. Asshole had recovered and wrapped his arms around Baird's waist from behind and lifted. Baird felt his feet leave the ground and spun in Asshole's grip, landing an elbow right in the guy's face. It was enough to convince him to drop Baird, and Jerk Off came back into the fight just in time for Baird's goggles to bridge his nose with a headbutt. Both of his assailants temporarily backing off, Baird spit in Asshole's direction.
"I don't know who taught you how to punch, but they screwed you in the long run pal." He sneered. Asshole and Jerk Off were both wearing their hair close cropped, and a long jagged scar dropped from Asshole's forehead to his chin, crossing his nose and right eye. Jerk Off fared little better, though his broken and swelling nose was likely earned from Baird and not some previous enemy. Asshole pointed an accusing finger at Baird.
"You're the asshole that botched the repairs on our 'Dill! We broke down in the middle of Grub territory because you don't know a wrench from your own dick!" Jerk Off nodded in affirmation, and it was enough to set Baird off.
"Fuck you, asshole. I can fix anything, and all my fixes are solid. If your 'Dill fucked up, something happened to it after I got a hold of it." Baird took things poorly when people question his ability to repair damned near anything. Asshole swung again, this time going low, and Baird let the blow bounce off of his plates before driving his knee into the guy's armpit and pushing him away. It forced Asshole to stumble, and Jerk Off caught his friend before he hit the floor. While Asshole struggled to regain his breath, it was Jerk Off's turn to open his mouth.
"When we broke down, six men died trying to fix that damned APC. Our entire squad, and the two guys that came to help us. Marsh, Thompson, everyone! And you were the one that supposedly fixed it in the first place!"
That stung, but it also didn't sound right to Baird. He lowered his fists a little, thinking the problem out.
"I don't let a single APC leave the garage unless it's ready to go. If I'm the one that fixed it, it was going to stay fixed. So either someone took it out from underneath me, or they messed with it after it left the shop. Either way, I'm not responsible for your buddies kicking the can." Baird really was a diplomat at times. Jerk Off didn't like his answer, but a massive arm wrapped around his chest and kept him there.
"Now now, kiddies. Daddy says y'all gotta play nice now, ya hear? Save it for the grubs." Cole chided gently. Jerk Off tried to wriggle from his grip, but Cole wasn't budging.
"That's bullshit! We pulled out a tool with your name on it, dickhead. It had to be you." Cole looked up from his captive at Baird, worry crossing his face.
"Now that ain't right. Baird's real careful with his toys." Cole defended his friend, but now Baird was curious as well. He got closer, Asshole still on the ground. He had worked on several APC's, and as far as he knew, all of his tools were accounted for. So soon after the blast, the only thing he had used were socket wrenches and spanners to clear out engine blockages. And he was pretty sure that he had all of them accounted for...
"What kind of tool? What did it look like?" Baird wasn't interrogating, but he was insistent. Missing tools were one thing, but finding one embedded in the engine of a downed 'Dill spoke of foul play. Baird wasn't careless enough to misplace something as valuable as his own tools, and he always cleared out every vehicle he worked on. He had to look into it.
"It was the stabilizer for an impact hammer. It had 'D. Baird' written in the grip." Jerk Off snarled. Baird gave Cole a look, and the ex-thrashball player released his captive. Jerk Off slumped down next to Asshole, and the two just sat and looked up at Baird and Cole.
"I didn't use an impact hammer this week. I only use it when we're removing the wheels. An impact hammer doesn't belong in an engine compartment anyway; I wouldn't even get it out." Baird was as much thinking out loud as he was explaining himself. Cole looked between the three of them, and Baird shook his head. "I don't know how it wound up there, but I'm going to find out. I didn't kill your buddies, but someone did." With that, Baird turned from the two on the ground and look at the rest of the patrons of the Grinding Gear. They were all looking at him and Cole with something akin to uncertainty, waiting to see if he'll haul off and deck someone else. Despite the throbbing setting into Baird's jaw, he wasn't up for a bar fight. He still had to locate Pad, and now he had to look at his personal stash of power tools.
Thirty minutes later, he and Cole had found their fourth squad member holed up at perimeter checkpoint 402, in the southwest corner of the city. Several patrolling squads had pointed the way. It was difficult to forget a man with a bright red Mohawk and blue facial tattoos. Baird and Cole had filled him in on the mission, as well as what they discovered in the Grinding Gear. Pad had frowned when Baird mentioned the missing tool handle.
"That does bugger things, doesn't it? Who would openly sabotage a COG vehicle? It's not like the Locust have any spies." Pad said worriedly, crossing his arms as they spoke. Cole looked out at the ash covered wastes outside of the Jacinto plateau.
"I'll bet it was one of the Stranded." Cole said it like he hated to, but the possibility was there. Since the Hammer strikes, survivors that had not been able to make it to Jacinto had emerged from the wreckage with hate in their hearts. Many times, Hoffman had ordered rescue and recovery efforts. And nearly every time, the survivors had spat upon the offered support and fled into the wasteland. Preliminary scouting reports indicated that the survivors were massing together in camps, and they were almost universally anti COG. The survivors collectively referred to themselves as Stranded, a defiant title that permanently branded them as victims of the COG. There had been few reported attacks, but no one could mistake the hatred coming from the Stranded. To some, that hate was warranted, but many Gears viewed the Stranded with a mixture of empathy and contempt.
"That doesn't sound like something they would do, but we can't rule it out." Pad said with some degree of sadness. He disliked fighting his fellow man when there were more dangerous monsters out to kill them. That being said, the Stranded were hard pressed for supplies. It wasn't a stretch of logic for them to sabotage a patrol, and then pick over the remains after the Locust did what they do best. Locust incursions were down since the strikes, but they had been seen among the ashes. Clearly, there had been losses.
"We'll go back to the garage and check my stash, and then after that we head to CIC. Sam is supposed to be working on a plan with Hoffman." Baird said decisively. "Watch your backs, and notify every guard post we pass. We may have someone slinking around the city." With that, the three Lima Squad members set off through the city. Pad and Cole stopped off at every checkpoint and summarized what was happening to the watch. There wasn't much that the sentries could do, other than stop people that looked scruffy and search them. The task was still necessary, and it kept them from making it to the garage at the same time as Baird. The blonde man stormed into his own personal corner and began digging through the tool boxes. He opened the standing locker where the heavier power tools were located, and sure enough his impact hammer was missing its stabilizer. The last time he had opened the power tool locker had been before the strikes, so he knew that the impact hammer hadn't left it since then. The local mechanics were ballsy, but no one was going to mess with Damon Baird's personal tools. That meant that whomever was digging around in his gear wasn't a mechanic. Cole's suggestion was starting to look more and more feasible.
"This sucks." Bird muttered to himself. He closed the locker and other tool chests, then left the garage through the open bay and headed toward the CIC building. Several curses and flights of stair later, he was on the command floor that Sam had climbed to just hours previously. He followed the hallways to Hoffman's office, and found Sam and Hoffman bent over a map of Landown. They both looked up when he came in, and Sam's expression shifted to one of concern when she noticed that Cole and Pad weren't with him.
"Baird, what's wrong? Where are the others?" She asked. Baird shook his head and stomped into the office, his irritation with the situation clear and present on his face. Hoffman scrunched his face up into its usual scowl, and Baird looked to match him.
"We've got someone running around the base. Apparently, someone slipped the stabilizer handle from my impact hammer into the engine compartment of an APC two days ago, and it got the patrolling guys killed." Baird reported. Hoffman growled at that and crossed his arms.
"The only armored patrol we sent out was Echo Squad out of 3rd Battalion, and they were reported all but two hands lost. They mentioned a mechanical failure, but no one said anything about sabotage." Hoffman leaned forward over his desk on both hands. "It's one of the reasons we cut off APC patrols."
"Well, Echo Squad found me and tried to clean my clock over it, because apparently they thought I left my tools in the engine." Baird snarked. Sam snorted at that prospect; Baird loved his tools more than life itself. By reputation alone, anyone with half a brain would know that Damon Baird would not leave anything belonging to him inside someone else's APC. Hoffman clearly agreed, but he wasn't convinced about the sabotage.
"How do you know it was sabotage? Grease monkeys trade tools all the time, and not everyone is as particular as you are, Corporal." Hoffman argued.
"No. Not even Gettner would would mess with my stuff. No one down in the garage would. Because of how deliberate it is, I'm banking on it being Stranded." Baird knew Hoffman would listen, but condemning citizens that two weeks prior had been on their side was a little rough, especially when he was talking to one of the three people responsible for the Hammer of Dawn's deployment. Still, Baird's report was concerning. To cement his point, Pad and Cole arrived, and Cole gave Sam and Hoffman a summary of what had happened at the Grinding Gear. When he finished, Hoffman's infamous temper flared up.
"You mean to tell me that some slinking son of a bitch is going around and getting my Gears killed for fucking car parts?!" He snarled, and would have likely start to throw things were it not for the presence of Lima Squad. Sam held up her hands in a placating manner.
"Alright Vic. Me and the boys will take care of Dad, while you and Anya chase down whoever was responsible for this. When we get back, Dad should be able to help. We'll fix this." Sam's words did little to ease Hoffman's mind, but his face relaxed somewhat.
"Alright. Just remember what we talked about, and stay on your toes." He turned to look at Baird. "Do you think you can rig an APC not to bog down with ash?" Baird shrugged and nodded.
"It'll be simple enough, provided that we have a place to stop and clean out a secondary filter every now and then. And that will be after I get a lock for my tool chests. Mechanics only." Hoffman had no problems with the blonde man's terms.
"Consider it done, and get to work. I'll have someone bring you locks to secure all the tools in the garage while you work. Sam, you need to get Pad and Cole up to speed on Naruto's methods." Hoffman turned and walked toward the door. He opened it and held it open for Lima Squad to leave, and they did so. Sam walked out last, and he closed the office door and locked it. Sam walked with him as he charged down the hall, Pad and Cole following.
"Colonel, what are you going to do?" She asked with a cocked eyebrow. Hoffman stopped and looked at her silently for a few seconds, though she could see his jaw working as if he were chewing on his next words.
"I'm going to see if I can convince the Chairman to survive when you bring your dad back."
Humanity could be compared to the cockroach in some respects. Both species had covered the planet, and were very hardy creatures. The Hammer of Dawn had leveled Landown and the surrounding area, but the survivors were plenty. In the ash covered wastes, nearly two dozen people from outlying farms and the highways had returned to the devastated stretch of land that had used to be their home. From what Naruto could gather, the locals were very upset with the COG, and recognized the Hammer of Dawn and its handiwork. The survivors had spent every day since the strikes building simple shacks and shanty houses just to keep the ever present ash out of their mouths. When he had found them, two of the survivors had been hunting in the forests on the mountain, nowhere near the top where New Hope had been, but close enough to attract Naruto's attention. Quiet observation had yielded some measure of information, and he had followed the two unaware hunters back to the rapidly growing settlement that had be christened Landown, in memory of their destroyed home.
From what Naruto could gather, the survivors – calling themselves Stranded – had a uniform disgust for the COG, and were visiting all undamaged properties in an effort to gather food and supplies. Unfortunately, it seemed that they weren't above taking supplies by force if the residents weren't willing to share. The ruthless gathering strategy and speed at which the shanty town was being built both indicated that there was some form of leadership set up. While Naruto trained his body in the forest, clones would enter Landown discreetly and listen in on conversations, similarly to how he had first scoped out Anvegad so many years ago. From what the clones could gather, a member of the local criminal element – a man calling himself Stick – was running the show, with six or seven toughs on hand to handle anyone that disagreed with his orders. Under Stick's iron fist, the surviving citizens of Landown had expanded quickly and violently from their stunned stupor. After two days of observation, halfway into his four day timeline, Naruto decided to meet the locals and see how they would respond to an outsider.
And so, here he was, trudging down the ashen road toward Landown. He wore mismatched clothing scavenged from the remains of New Hope, with a torn lab coat as a cloak to keep the constantly falling ash out of his face. A stiff pair of boots almost too small for him covered his feet, but he figured shinobi sandals would be ill received in a time like this.
Naruto walked for some time before he encountered any sign of Landown's residents, as he had planned. Roughly thirty yards from the new shanty town still under construction, a lone guard in rough, dirty clothing stood next to a burning barrel. The guard had an old Lancer resting in his hands, the kind wielded during the Pendulum Wars. When he saw Naruto approaching from the distance, he blew a whistle. The sharp, shrill sound cut through the air three times, and two more armed men came out from the ramshackle grouping of plywood houses. Naruto continued walking, until the original sentry called out to him.
"Stop where you are, hands where we can see 'em!" The man was young, with a little bit of a break in his voice meaning that he had just gone through puberty not long ago. Whatever boyish features he might have had were hidden under a knit cap and behind a face made gaunt by a few months of hard living. Whatever had swept across the planet, it had been a problem before the Hammer strikes. Naruto did as he was told and stopped walking, lifting his arms high above his head. The other two men approached slowly, their rifles trained on him as they moved. When they got close enough, the one on the right jerked an elbow forward. Naruto saw it coming from a mile away, and rolled with the impact to prevent injury. The blow rolled off of his chin as Naruto dove to the ground, landing on his hands and knees and doing an excellent job of playing the stunned traveler.
"Keep your fucking hands up!" The man that had struck him barked, and Naruto felt the cold barrel of the rifle press into his back. He lifted his arms again, and affected a shaky voice as he played his part.
"Hey, come on man take it easy. I don't have anything worth taking." Naruto put some amount of fear into his voice, though internally he was bored out of his mind. Give a guy a gun and suddenly he had all the power in the world. The man jabbed his barrel between Naruto's shoulder blades in response.
"Shut up! We'll see whether or not you have anything." Naruto felt him shift as the weapon shook slightly. "Search him."
Rough hands patted Naruto's arms and sides, then reached forward to pat down his chest and groin. It was a sloppy search, performed by someone who didn't really know what they were looking for, but the sentry wasn't gentle in his motions. After finding nothing on his person other than a wallet that Naruto had scavenged, the sentry let him go and stepped back. The man that had struck him jabbed him in the back with the barrel of his Lancer again.
"Alright, on your feet. Slowly." Naruto complied and stood up from his knees. When he reached his full height – several inches taller than the other three men – the man that had searched him grabbed his wrists and wrenched them down behind his back. With Naruto safely secured, the man with the Lancer and the one that had searched him marched the captured ninja into the town, leaving the original sentry standing watch. As they walked, Naruto tried to look around, but a quick backhand from the man holding the gun discouraged that behavior.
"Eyes on the fucking ground, meat." The man snarled. Naruto felt his anger flare up, but he quelled it as he was escorted deeper into the town. With smaller operations like this, the grunts often brought every little issue to the guy in charge. It was the quickest way to meet Stick. Using his peripheral vision, Naruto observed several women and even a few children among the gruff and armed men. They all looked his way with frightened eyes, though he couldn't tell for certain if their fear was directed at him or his captors.
The two thugs pushed and shoved him past several ramshackle buildings, constructed with plywood, sheet metal, and whatever else could be found in the ashen wastes. The smell of cedar was in the air, and Naruto could hear the faint sound of sawing logs in the distance. For a people that had been the victim of the most devastating weapon of mass destruction in Sera's history, the people of Landown were recovering quickly. More quickly than he expected.
The thugs led him to a covered shack with a wooden door attached, and after a few knocks, the door was opened and he was pushed inside.