WARRIORS HIGH
ISLAND OF THE LOST
CHAPTER ONE
LINE OF FIRE
At exactly 5:45 AM, a lithe woman with dirty blonde hair raised a Bluetooth speaker into the air.
The sound of the bugle seemed to slice through the serene air as the tents near the forest rustled immediately. Suddenly, the once quiet camp was bustling with hustling activity. Men and women and teens of ages fifteen to thirty woke up with varying levels of contentment in the early morning, doing hurried basic steps of hygiene and scuffling over to the woman with the speaker, who clipped it on her belt which tucked in a vest with a large imprint of a daffodil on the right side of the chest.
By 5:52, twenty-one persons, soldiers by the look of their uniforms, stood at varying levels of attention in front of the woman, whose metal star hat embellishment shone in the morning sun.
"Stand at attention!" she ordered.
All twenty-one soldiers stamped their left foot simultaneously. "ATTENTION!"
She smirked confidently. "Good morning, resisters."
Per usual, she gave out the ultimatum for the day, including drills, training and various housekeeping chores. The soldiers took orders without question, but it wasn't hard to detect an inward groan from the teenage soldiers when they were assigned the odd jobs, especially by a twenty-two year old.
When they were dismissed to officially begin the long day, the woman quickly made her way to a wooden shack, flinging open the rusty-hinged screen door and rushing down the stairs. She arrived at a sleek, white control room with six monitors propped and processing data over and over again.
After clearing her throat, the boy at the helm of the computer stood up immediately, saluting to acknowledge her presence.
"Good morning, Daffodil."
"Glad to see you're up and running, Jaywhisker," said Daffodil, motioning for him to be at ease and leaning over the master computer next to him, "Status report."
"The probes we planted yesterday have been pretty effective so far," he said, pulling up what looked to be surveillance footage on each of the six monitors, "We've been able to track the times when ARS soldiers have been in motion, but there hasn't been a significant pattern in their movements. They don't know that the probes are planted, but there hasn't been any useful use for them yet."
Daffodil raised an eyebrow. "You do remember this was your grand plan, right?"
"I know," said Jaywhisker, rolling his eyes, "but stay with me here. You can't expect these things to work right away on day one, just like we can't always assume ARS is completely flawless in their movements. They'll mess up at some point, and according to fiction-story logic, at the time either we or they least expect them to."
She rolled her eyes. "You've been reading too many novels, haven't you?"
"Hey," he said, nudging her in a friendly manner, "Eventually I run out of things to do when my job is to literally wait in a dark room."
"What happened to your tinkering phase?"
"I'm low on plausible ideas," he said nonchalantly, "Sometimes, novels have good sparks of inspiration behind them. I'm just spending my free time looking for those."
"Sure, sure," said Daffodil, "I'll leave you to your bookworming, then."
She was just about to leave when she remembered something very important, so important that she scolded herself for almost forgetting.
"Jay?" she asked, "Is the radio running at full capacity?"
"Per your orders, ma'am," said Jaywhisker, rolling his chair over to a telephone that looked right out of the fifties wired heavily up to a large industrial radio.
Daffodil took a seat, adjusting the chair to her liking, before turning the radio on, adjusting the knob so the frequency indicator rested just after 104, and listened.
"BASECAMP to BLACKSTORM, come in, BLACKSTORM, please respond."
Static. She expected this, but couldn't help but feel a pang of disappointment and worry as she listened in harder this time.
"BASECAMP to BLACKSTORM, come in, BLACKSTORM."
She was met with static once again, but just when she was about to sign off, she heard a small tapping. Her body straightened and her face lit up immediately.
She waited until the tapping ceased, realizing she had missed the message, and said "BLACKSTORM, we hear you. Please repeat."
She listened carefully, quickly grabbing for the laminated morse code cheat sheet Jay kept on his desk at all times.
"STAT G; SIGHT N; GUN1 Y; GUN2 N; GUN3 Y; GUN4 T; BASE TODAY"
Even though the man at the other end could tap his talkie fast, it still was a loaded message and it took Daffodil a moment to process it. STAT G meant he was still alive, well and maintaining undercover status, SIGHT N meant he had not seen or found any ARS soldiers or resources, the GUN messages meant that he was making progress on his gun testing. He had been sent out on a mission to test newly developed sniper modules and their range, accuracy and quality. That portain meant Models 1 and 3 passed, Model 2 was faulty and he was testing Model 4 today.
And then the last part, the part that brought Daffodil to an unbreakable mood high.
BASE TODAY meant he was coming back to camp today.
That made up for the entire week that he had been gone.
"Good," she said into the radio.
She paused a moment, glancing over at Jaywhisker, who was slaving over his keyboard furiously.
"I love you, Ash," she whispered into the radio.
After a brief silence, she got one more message back.
"LUV YOU 2"
Yes, the fact that the sniper could be deconstructed into seven pieces and could be worn somewhat inconspicuously on a utility belt was cool, but it was a pain in the ass to assemble. Especially discretely and from the top of a tree.
Ashtooth sat on the top branch of a tree, struggling to lock in the suppressor. It wasn't that the sniper had a useless design, as being able to theoretically carry a disambiguous sniper in plain sight was extremely helpful in some cases of espionage, but it had to be constructed meticulously, or else a whole world of possibilities of what could possibly go wrong could blow up in his face.
He couldn't let that happen. Any attacks against ARS had to be perfect. Any mistakes and they would define the term 'dead before the war began.'
After almost twenty seconds of fiddling, he finally managed to lock the long barrel in place, locked the scope, and finally got into position. Despite the forty-five seconds it took him to assemble the gun, he couldn't help but feel a tingle of excitement as he aimed it for the first time.
After loosening it up in the prop for a moment, he detached the original scope and locked in a heat-sig scope, a special device where the scope fired infra-red lasers to, for right now, calculate the distance from the target. That was all he was told about the scope for now.
Now came the hardest part. Waiting for birds.
There were a lot of concerns about the distinct absence of avian life ever since ARS invaded the island. It had certainly set off a five-alarm fire for the British WIldlife Center, who had slowly begun to catch the anomaly, but for now, it was just an irritation that prolonged the mission six days longer than it needed to be.
God, he was so ready to go back home.
Immediately, his attention shot back to earth when he heard a cawing, seeing a flock of seagulls flying on the near shore.
The scope was fluctuating every half-second, but it seemed to level out at around 640 m. Pretty average, as he'd hit targets from 1000 m before, but for a test, this would do.
He waited for a clear window, prepped his finger on the trigger, and fired.
The blast rang in his ear and one of the seagulls exploded into a flurry of gray feathers. The flock freaked out, dispersing in several directions after their comrade was shot down.
He was just about to disengage the gun when he noticed a bird flying directly away from him.
He let his ego lead the way and looked back into the sniper scope.
The gull was flying north of him very quickly, the scope was increasing by about 5 meters every half-second.
He waited, keeping the scope trained on the bird and his finger on the trigger.
1000 meters. Usually he would fire by now, but he truly wanted to test himself now.
Two minutes slowly passed. The bird was 2,200 meters away.
It was a miracle that the bird was keeping its course so far away from the island. He didn't question it, though. He wanted to get this perfect.
Thirty seconds. 2,500 meters away. The bird was now so small on his scope that he had to zoom the scope to its maximum field of vision.
Sixty more seconds. The bird was now over 3,000 feet away.
The longest confirmed kill by a sniper was 3,500 meters. Usually, he left record shots untouched, but there was something about this gun the clearly was beckoning him to test the limits.
224 seconds after he killed the first seagull, the bird was 3,260 feet away and was starting to divert in course. Ashtooth silently cursed like a sailor and willed it to stay on target. This was truly an unusual surge of self-confidence, especially for him.
3,300 feet.
His fingers wrapped around the trigger.
3,400 feet.
He held his breath, willing himself not to think about his impeccable balance among the branches.
3,500 feet.
He fired, the bang sending a harsher jolt through his body than usual, and watched.
An agonizing second later, his jaw dropped as the gull jarred sharply off course and fell into the sea.
Ashtooth took a second to admire in his work.
He was pretty sure he just broke a world record.
Out of all the things he'd had to do when he joined the Resistance, breaking the world record for a sniper kill was something so daunting, he had to take a couple seconds to bask in his momentary, silent glory.
But he remembered that he had to get moving. So he hastily deconstructed the gun, which, what do you know, was much less of a pain in the ass than the assembly, clipped them to his new, shiny belt which he suspected he would wear for a long time and got moving, swinging like a monkey and navigating the trees until he landed on a small cottage roof in the middle of the forest. Taking a detailed look around to make sure he was not being watched, he opened up the skylight and slipped into the attic, landing with a thud on the floor to announce his appearance and closing the glass window behind him.
He suspected a welcome back when he heard hurried footsteps up the stairs, but was not prepared when the woman with the long brown hair with silver tips hustled in with a worried look on her face.
"Ash?" said the woman, who seemed to be silently freaking out, "Have you seen Dusty? Daffodil just called. He hasn't shown up to camp at all!"
Ashtooth's eyes widened.
"What!?"
A teen of about seventeen with barely darkening blond hair finally got the keycard right and unlocked the door to his personalized music studio.
Just as he had left it. Drum set in the far right, synth on the far left, compact piano on the lear right and on the left wall an acoustic guitar, electric guitar and trackpad.
So many possibilities, so much music in so little time. This is truly what he loved to see.
Dusty was called a lot of things. Ever since the bombings a year and a half ago, those who had heard about him probably thought of him as a skilled close-combat fighter with the vigilance of an eagle scout, but those who truly knew him knew he had become so much more.
He loved music. Some even called him a musical prodigy. To that he scoffed. He was sure that several other people in the world had perfect pitch and a good sense of rhythm. He just decided to do something with it.
This was his work so far. He had gotten good enough to almost play the 3rd movement of Moonlight Sonata memorized and rock out to "Enter Sandman," but he was no prodigy.
He just loved music. He did the fighting to make money to do what he loved.
He had a plan for what he would do today.
Ruffling in his jean pockets, he grabbed his AirPod Pros, which were probably knock-offs since they were light saffron instead of white, connected them to his phone and put the noise-cancelling headphones over his ears.
Taking a seat at the drum set, he pulled out his phone, opened YouTube and searched "whiplash caravan"
Whiplash was one of his favorite movies. It taught him to do a rain check every time he aspired perfection and love jazz among every other genre of music. (He loved every genre of music. Except death metal. Because ew.) But "Caravan," the final piece in the movie, he had fallen in love with immediately. And now, he was going to play it.
He held his drumsticks in his left hand as his right pressed play, but when a thirty-second ad played, he suddenly had an idea.
He hit the lights, plunging the entire room in complete black.
As the video buffered from the shitty internet connection, he envisioned different scenes in the movie. All of them involved Terence Fletcher. In one of the final scenes, he was telling the audience the band was going to play "Upswingin'" a difference of about 75 bpm, right before he would launch into a 160 bpm double-time Latin.
Then, when the video was ready, he was standing in front of him. The first scene, every expectation there.
"Double-time Latin. One, two, three, four…"
With a hit on the crash, he launched into a double-time Latin, micromanaging his tempo before he started to freestyle. It was all the noise of the band, first the bass, then the piano and the passionate brass, that filled his ears. He tuned out from all the violence of his job, violence of the world (ironic since the movie had its little bit of blood and broken fingers itself) as the music sauntered through him at 160 beats per minute.
Four minutes later, the trombone solo ended and he was preparing to launch into his convoluted drum solo that could be summarized into "do what you want" on sheet music for five minutes.
Unfortunately, the lights came on, screwing up his tempo and caused his playing to screech to a halt. He was about to sling a harshly-worded remark about disturbing what was likely his best drum part ever before he saw who it was.
"Impressive repertoire you got here, Dusty," said Mallowleaf, inviting herself in as Dusty fumbled with his headphones to address the general of the Resistance.
"Is this where you've been all morning? Doing jazz solos instead of showing up to base?"
Dusty took the easy way out. "Yes."
Mallowleaf nodded. "Interesting, because the records say that you've only been in the studio for…" she looked at a small receipt-looking slip of paper, "'ten minutes."
"Yes, what I meant to say," said Dusty, hastily correcting himself, "is that I was searching for a new violin. Y'know, something new to indulge myself on."
Mallowleaf put him to the test. "What piece did you have in mind?"
The response came so fast, Dusty didn't realize he was saying it. "'The Swan,' by Camille Saint-Saens."
The general raised her eyebrow. "Dusty, that's a cello solo."
This caught Dusty off-guard. "How did you-"
"Ashtooth clued me in that you have a knack for classical. Did some light research myself."
The boy sagged his shoulders in defeat. "Alright, fine. You win."
Mallowleaf lowered herself until they were the same height, which was awkward enough since Dusty was only four inches shorter than her, but she knew it would make him listen. "Dusty, we have a war on our hands, one where the fate of our home is in the balance. You are the best close-combat fighter we have. We need you, Dusty," she gestured to the expanse of instruments surrounding the two soldiers, "I know you love music and I respect that, but if we don't have you, we lose the fight, and all this is gone. All of these opportunities to do the thing you love, Dusty, wasted, surrendered to ARS."
Dusty stood silent, but showed by his eyes that he was intensely listening. It was strange how she made him feel like her son every time they talked, likely one of her own rhetorical skills.
"Please, Dusty," she said, "I know fighting's not something you enjoy that much, but your skill is something we really need. For the good of this island."
The boy sighed, nodding. Weeks ago, when the resistance was still forming, he and Daffodil had come to terms with a respectable rate for showing up and training for six days a week. Though he heavily favored his music over his training and fighting, he rarely screwed up his attendance or would skip for any reason.
He had a reason today, and Mallowleaf seemed to sniff that out. "Now since we're here," she said, smirking, "Dare I ask where you were all morning?"
Dusty didn't even try to get out of this. Mallowleaf seemed to have a supernatural specialty for sniffing out lies, but this felt awkward to say out loud.
"I…" he said, reaching over to scratch the back of his neck, "I got a date."
"Really?" said the woman, surprised, "Well, good for you. She cute?"
"Yeah," he said, smiling momentarily before his face scrunched up in worry.
"Did I say something wrong?"
"Well, it's actually a he."
To his surprise and monumental relief, she shrugged. "Okay. Well, congrats. You asked him out?"
"Yeah."
"Where to?"
"The, uh...the coffee shop."
"Ah yes. The timeless classic."
"Well, see," he said, looking at his shoes, "He works at the coffee shop."
That made Mallowleaf chuckle. "Well, good for you. At least you can avoid the likely hassle of having him ride on the back of your bicycle." Dusty chuckled at that. "But getting back on topic, you should probably get to camp as soon as possible. I just barely won over Coalstrike breaking into Ashtooth's car and draggin' you back to camp by the ear."
The boy rolled his eyes. "Bit emphatic, ain't it?"
"Either way, you should get going," she said guiding him to the main part of the music store, "Pedal like the world is ending, Dusty?"
"Oh come on! Don't you have a car?"
Mallowleaf crossed her arms. "I have three kids, Dusty. And as you know, they're not the tidiest in the world."
"Fair...fair point," he said, rushing out the door, waving.
Mallowleaf gave a curt wave back, but her eyes drifted to a woman, about 16 or 17, looking over the last box of guitar picks.
The error that she realized the girl had made, though, was that she had been looking at the same box of picks since she snuck in fifteen minutes prior.
She casually strolled over to the general area before turning around and looking over the woman's shoulder at the box of picks she was holding.
"You play guitar?"
The girl didn't turn around, but acknowledged her with a slight nod. "Not willingly. Folks at home wanted me to expand my skills."
Mallowleaf nodded. "Must be a strict family."
The girl inadvertently let out a chuckle. "You better believe it."
"Oh, I do."
Mallowleaf drew her gun, a denim-shaded Glock 43X, and aimed the barrel at the back of her neck.
"If you sent anything, you're gonna be sporting a hole in your throat for the forseeable future."
The girl smiled. "Oh, that doesn't matter. They're on their way as we-"
BANG!
Mallowleaf pulled the trigger, killing the girl immediately and causing the box of plastic guitar picks to explode across the aisle. Taking a moment to decipher what the ARS agent had said as she walked with purpose to the counter and dropped a twenty in front of the cashier cowering under the desk, it then dawned on her what they were going to do as if a train had hit her at full speed.
She raced out the door, sprinting to the nearest phone booth. She drew the curtains used for privacy, stumbled across a small video camera nestled in the top corner, which she promptly ripped out and crushed with her feet, and dialed the number to camp.
The boy answered with his normal recited spiel. "Island Directional Services, how may I help you?"
"This is Mallowleaf, authentication A-1057, 2994."
"Something wrong? Where's Dusty?"
"Send Ashtooth to intercept him and get him the hell out of here!" Mallowleaf was hyperventilating now. "ARS found us. We've been compromised!"
And that is Chapter One. Hopefully gives you perspective on four of the six OC characters I'll be using.
I plan on making Dusty and Ashtooth main characters, while Daffodil and Mallowleaf will be "cheering on from the sidelines."
Next chapter, you get the final two OC's intros. And they are some of my favorite characters in the world. (And only one of them is mine).
Chapters won't commonly be this long. Just for the first parts of exposition. Then we should plateau at ~1,500 words.
Hope you enjoyed the large lump of exposition.
Best,
~Res