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The Fourth Carmine

"Humans" – Locusts speaking their native tongue.

The second that Private Carmine left the house, his ears were assaulted by the sounds of warfare once again, albeit more subdued. Strangely enough, the baby that he held in one arm was sound asleep, unknowing and uncaring of the potential danger he was currently in. It was a good thing too, as a crying babe would alert any passing Locust patrol of both their presences. He was good soldier, but he doubted that he would be able to take down an entire squad of grubs by himself with only a pistol, no cover, and a baby cradled on his arm. 'What a story that would make…" Carmine thought to himself before remembering that only survivors got to tell their tales.

Placing his back to an intact stone retaining wall opposite of the house, Carmine decided that he needed a plan of action; a plan of survival. Should he go back the way he came? Would the grubs that decimated his squad still be there, or would they have already moved on? Perhaps he should forge a new path to the Centaurs? Maybe he could find another squad of Gears? There is safety in numbers after all… Nodding his head, Carmine took to the left towards unknown territory. After all, what was the worst that could happen?

Carmine paused, 'On second thought, I probably just jinxed myself. This is a fucking war, the worst that could happen is that I get other people killed, myself killed, and/or this kid killed. Hell no! I'm going solo here!' Carmine decided promptly. Turning around with a determined gleam in his eye, Carmine started going back the way he came, his shoulder/back pressed firmly against the stone wall.

It was not long until he came upon the site of the ambush that killed the rest of his squad. The way that they were slaughtered made Carmine's blood boil. They were caught in the open with hardly any cover to speak for. Corporal Teyrin, their squad leader, had been the first to fall, catching a few rounds to the lungs before any of the squad knew there were even enemies around. His was the worst death; spending the last minutes of his life gasping for the air that wouldn't stay, later suffocating as his lungs filled with his own blood. Haynes died next, getting caught inside a Bola grenade's radius as it exploded. His death was quick from what Carmine could tell; no way getting your torso vaporized with shrapnel was a slow death. Lastly was Thomas, the only one that Carmine had any sort of kinship with in his squad. The crazy bastard ran into an entire group of Grubs with his precious Gnasher Shotgun while Carmine tried to cover him. He was able to pin several Grubs down for long enough to get Thomas into shotgun range, but he didn't last very long after Carmine's Lancer jammed while he was trying to reload quicker. He ran as fast as he could into the buildings soon after clearing the jam, abandoning Thomas to his fate.

It sat like a boulder in Carmine's stomach knowing that his cowardice and poor handwork had let Thomas down. Carmine didn't think that he'd be able to stomach being near Thomas's corpse knowing that it could very well be his fault that Thomas was dead in the first place.

Shaking away the bitter and self-revolting thoughts, Carmine carefully examined the surrounding area. Seeing no signs of any life whatsoever, with the exception to the octopus creatures floating in the sky, Carmine and his small ward stepped away from cover.

Carmine entertained the idea of collecting the I.D. tags of his fellow Gears, but thought better of it. He doubted that this location would be as safe as it was for much longer, and he did NOT want to be there when things went sour again. Then again, Corporal Teyrin's body was along the way, and it wouldn't be take too long to rip off his tags. Carmine had no desire to rifle through the meat that was once Hayne's chest in search of his tags. He honestly doubted that they would've survived the blast in the first place anyway. Thomas's body… Carmine didn't think that he would be able to look at what those damned Grubs had left of him. He would just have to leave him where he was and pray for forgiveness once he had gotten both himself and the baby out of this god-forsaken city.

The next 30 minutes were relatively quiet and stressful. While Carmine did not encounter any Locust, he did find several other Gears. Sadly, they all happened to be less alive than Carmine hoped. A quick glance at their ashen faces told Carmine nothing of their identities. Carmine wanted to gather their COG tags, he really did, but he knew that the longer he stayed in one place the better the chances were that he would be found by the Grubs. He moved on.

Carmine soon came upon an intersection in the road, which split the road that he was currently on, Poloan St, if he recalled correctly, into two diagonal branches. To the left was Market St, the road that he and his squad had traversed early in the day. His squad hadn't experienced much trouble down that street, but it looked like a few mortar crews had targets in the area recently, as much of the buildings on the left-hand side were partially destroyed.

Collapsed walls, sunken roofs, and exposed rooms… who knows who or what could have slinked into the now open buildings, waiting to splatter their blood across the cobblestone street. "Too risky," mumbled Carmine as he turned his attention to the path on his right.

The next street sign read 'Boughs Blvd'. It was a narrower street than Market, and the surrounding buildings were a lot less destroyed. In fact, the only signs of war on this street was the closed-up E-Hole and a few dead bodies of civilians. Spotting a corpse by a nearby mail car, Carmine rushed as quickly and as quietly as possible and plunked himself within arms-reach of the poor departed soul. Setting his pistol on the ground, Carmine felt the dead man's exposed skin, hoping to be able to guess how long his body had been dead, and subsequently how long ago the Grubs that killed him had come and hopefully gone. The man was stone cold, hopefully having kicked the bucket hours ago. With this new information, Carmine decided that this would be a much better path to take than the other, which was possibly still hot with activity, or even just slightly-warm.

Pulling up his mental map of the area, detailed greatly through the few hours of studying done prior to deployment, Carmine remembered that this particular boulevard eventually met up with one of the roads that he needed to take to get back to the Centaurs. Certain of his new path, Carmine re-equipped his pistol and cautiously stepped over the deceased man while keeping his back to the long side of the stout mail truck. The coast remained clear.

In fact, the coast remained clear for several blocks. Carmine didn't know whether or not the invasion of Jasper was over and all the Grubs had retreated. Maybe he was just incredibly lucky? Hell, he didn't really care at the moment! No one was shooting at him and he hadn't found anymore. In fact, things around the area were very quiet, much like it would have been on a sleepy summer morning during that short, sweet period between wars. It was too quiet… until an odd chittering sound broke the silence behind them.

"The hell is that…?" Carmine murmured to himself as he turned around, trying to find the source. Skittering towards him and the child he held was a grotesque, quadrupedal creature about the same height as a medium-sized dog with slate gray flesh. Its forelegs were thin and long, ending in three sharp claws. On top of the small creature was a canister of a luminescent pale-yellow liquid, which was seemingly fused or welded to the skittering creature's back. Putrid yellow teeth shown in the creature's mouth were locked in a permanent grimace… or was it a malicious grin? Carmine couldn't tell, nor did he want to find out.

"Holy shit, is that Imulsion?" Carmine whispered in wonder. Wonder quickly turned into fear as the creature gave a shriek and charged directly at Carmine and his young ward. Quickly drawing a bead on the fast, chittering creature, Carmine pulled the trigger of his Snub pistol. The round quickly struck the creature which promptly exploded, quite literally, in a shower of gore.

Carmine went wide-eyed behind his helmet. If that thing had exploded anywhere near him, he'd be toast, and not the good kind! He would have to be extra vigilant from her on out. Quickly sparing a glance down at the swaddled infant in his arms, he noticed that somehow, despite the rather loud explosion that went off less than 10 feet away, the child still slept soundly. Carmine couldn't help but wish that his younger brothers could've slept half as soundly this one did.

Carmine stirred himself away from pleasant thoughts of home nearly as soon as they came, just in time to hear multiple instances of the same skittering sounds that that creepy little critter had made just before nearly blowing him up seconds earlier.

'First time was easy enough,' Carmine thought to himself as one of the creatures popped out of the doggy door of a nearby house. 'Second time around should be about the same.' As he drew another bead on the creature, he saw a second one come out of the same doggy door. And then a third, and then a fourth. Soon enough, nearly a dozen of the creepy creatures littered the street, skittering back and forth and chittering to each other. Not thirty seconds later, the creatures saw him and charged, giving out the same horrid shriek as their fallen brother let out.

Carmine back peddled as he fired shot after shot, each round either hitting its mark or missing by a small margin. An explosion followed every successful hit, knocking away and stunning any surrounding monstrosities. How there wasn't a chain reaction of explosions, Carmine didn't know. There was no time to dwell on such things, as each second wasted on thinking was one less spent on dodging exploding monsters from hell.

Carmine broke into a cold sweat at the sound of his pistol clicking. While this wouldn't normally be a problem, seeing as every COG soldier was at least proficient in normal reloading, basic training did not teach him how to reload a gun using only one hand. In addition, how the hell was he supposed to combat roll with a child on him? Carmine was about to get trained in both under fire. Or in this case, explosions.

One of the 6 remaining skittery bastards got close while Carmine was distracted. Two previously hidden pipes ignited near the open ends. The rolling did not turn out to be as difficult as Carmine thought it would be, but it did limit which directions he would be able to dodge. The explosion that the creature caused was hot, and a small piece of shrapnel nicked his arm. Carmine gave no indication of noticing as he was too focused on trying to figure out how the hell he was going to reload his damn weapon! If only he was trained for this!

By the time that Carmine finally got his weapon reloaded, he had successfully jammed and un-jammed his weapon three times, all the while dodging three more of the exploding horrors. Turning his focus to the remainder of the creatures, Carmine put a round each into his small enemies, smiling and panting lightly with satisfaction released nerves as the remaining two exploded a safe distance away from him and his young charge.

Carmine's smile soon broke into a small series of giggles, falling to the ground in a sitting position as the excess adrenalin exited his body. He couldn't believe it! He must be one hell of a badass to survive THAT mess! As the echoes of his fight and his light laughter faded away, silence once again ruled the street. Carmine took this calm moment to check up the sleeping baby cradled in his arms.

The child was swaddled in a light tan cloth, partially soaked in the dried, deep crimson blood of his mother. He had a round face with three lines on each cheek which resembled whiskers. A tuft of brilliant blond hair could be seen underneath the cloth. Lastly, the boy, Naruto, if Carmine remembered correctly, had a small button nose, which reminded Carmine a great deal of his youngest brother's nose: perfect for booping. He couldn't resist, lightly tapping Naruto's nose with his forefinger.

As Carmine's cloth covered finger lightly tapped the child's nose, Naruto stirred for the first time since shortly after his birth. His face scrunched up for a moment, and his eyes slowly opened for the first time. He had amethyst colored eyes, a shade just a tad darker than his mother's, which gazed upon Carmine's masked face with curiosity.

Before Carmine could do anything else, he felt something long and sharp pierce through his body armor and deep into his lower back. He let out a loud gasp of pain and shock, quickly rolling sloppily to his feet. Behind him was the last of the exploding creatures, one that he had somehow missed or forgotten about, it's right forearm/foreclaw slicked red with Carmine's blood.

The creature shrieked out and charged at Carmine, pipes blazing in preparation for it's suicide charge. Carmine spewed a long string of obscenities as he fumbled with his sidearm, unable to cleanly pull it off the magnetic holster on his leg.

In desperation Carmine lashed out with his left leg, punting the charging creature with all his might. Instead of it exploding violently upon impact like Carmine had dreaded, the creature bounced right off his leg and sailed across the street, smacking the stone wall of a two-story house with a crunch. Carmine ripped his pistol off its holster and fired three shots into the unmoving creature causing it to violently explode, heavily damaging the wall nearby.

"YEEEEAAAAHAHAHAHAH! TAKE THAT YOU LITTLE FUCK!" Carmine exclaimed with vigor as he fired a few celebratory rounds into the sky. He then proceeded to foolishly do a small jig in the middle of the street in celebration of his unlikely and small victory.

However, the sudden motions and incredibly loud noises had startled Naruto, causing him to start wailing as any baby would do under the circumstances. This quickly brought Carmine back to his senses, and immediately did what he could do to get Naruto to quiet down, to no avail.

With his attention focused on Naruto, Carmine did not notice that the damaged wall behind him starting to collapse. With a mighty crash the formerly sturdy wall collapsed, taking part of the second floor and the roof with it. As the dust cleared, Carmine saw something that he hoped he would never see: inside the building was a small squad of four Locust soldiers, staring at him with shocked expressions.

Moments prior

The Locust group were taking a well-deserved break from the tiring invasion of the surface city by holding up in a random human building. The group was composed of a Drone, a Sniper, a Grenadier, and most surprisingly, a Theron Sentinel. The Theron, equipped with a heavy black and red cuirass, a rounded helm which covered all of his head sans the mouth, and an unloaded Torque Bow sheathed on a magnetic holster located on the small of his back. Said Theron was playing the Locust version of G0-Fish with the sparsely armored and heavily muscled Grenadier, who had brought the leather-crafted cards from his home in the Hollow. Both sat at a convenient wooden table at the center of the room.

The Sniper and the Drone both had light armor on and were nearly identical visually, with the exception to the tinted eye goggles that protected the Sniper's keen vision. The Sniper had his Longshot sheathed and had gone off to find and raid the food storage areas that the humans surely kept in the house. The Drone stood more or less at attention near the table where the Grenadier and the Theron played, Hammerburst rifle knocked in his arms and ready to fire at a moment's notice.

The Drone was nervous, he could hear the telltale sounds of combat outside but the Theron, de facto leader of the group, felt it was not worth the time nor the trouble to take care of it, stating that the Tickers would be enough. The Drone nervously readjusted his grip on his standard issue rifle as a loud explosion sounded in the streets outside.

"Sir, that sounded incredibly close! Shouldn't we at least look?" The Drone whispered nervously, shuffling in his spot.

The Grenadier and the Theron both spared him a glance before the Grenadier burst out in ill-natured laughter while the Theron merely shifted his gaze back to his cards. "Look you grunt," the Grenadier said with a sneer. "It doesn't matter if a few humans survive this day. They'll all fall soon enough!" the Grenadier ended with a harsh chuckle, lightly clacking the trio of Bolo grenades at his side in a threatening manner.

"Got any three's?" asked the Theron with a shit-eating grin, as if he had already known that the Grenadier had one.

The Grenadier snarled before slapping his card against the table. "Every fucking time. How in the Worm's shit do you do that?!"

The Theron merely grinned and leaned back into his chair, keeping silent as the Grenadier fumed. Gunfire and explosions sounded outside the house, causing the Drone to flinch. The sounds were getting close to their resting spot, but one look from the Grenadier scared away whatever the Drone was going to say.

At this point, the Sniper came back from the human's kitchen holding a bone-white plate with a large triangular slice of three-layered brown food. Using a fork, he took a dainty bite, for a Locust at least. The Sniper groaned in contentment.

"Say what you want about these humans," the Sniper said, lifting the fork to take a much larger bite from his food. "But they sure do have some delicious foodstuffs!"

The Drone shook his head in wonderment and took a step away from the group of three, wondering how the hell he got himself stuck with this bizarre group. 'Oh right… they needed cannon fodder...' All Drones stayed Drones until they proved themselves in combat to be selected for specialized training. The Drone's standard issue grey and red leather cuirass was shiny and new, denoting that this was his first deployment. He had been able to show nothing special, and he never would if he was cooped up like this!

As the Sniper took a third chunk from his treat with his fork, a powerful force shook the stone wall leading towards the street outside. All of them then heard a single human yelling, like it was taunting them. Before the Drone could start making his way towards the door, the wall shuddered with a groan and collapsed, kicking up mortar dust and debris which clogged the Grenadier and the Drone's vision. As the dust cleared from the area and from the afflicted eyes, the four Locust saw a single, blue armor-clad individual, staring at them.

Back to the present

After a long moment's pause which seemed like an eternity, Carmine sprang into action. He immediately put three bullets into the one holding a Hammerburst with his Snub Pistol, causing the Drone's head to explode with a shower of gore and brain matter. The one with the Longshot and the cake was next, and like the previous Drone, got three bullets imbedded into his head, killing him as well. The element of surprise was over.

The remaining two Locust charged Carmine in a swift, serpentine pattern, hoping that he would be unable to hit anything important with the sidearm. They were successful for the most part, with Grenadier taking only a simple grazing wound to his left shoulder.

The Grenadier delivered a straight punch to Carmine's face, staggering him for a moment, which was all that the Theron needed to a land a heavy left hook to the side of Carmine's head, causing him to fall.

Carmine quickly rolled out of the way of the Grenadier's kick. He was NOT trained for this shit! At this point, Naruto started to cry louder in his arms. 'Definitely not trained for this!' Carmine screamed in his mind. As he stood, Carmine tried to draw a quick bead onto the helmetless one, shooting once and scoring a second hit on the Grenadier's leg before the helmed one grabbed his firing arm and ripped the gun from Carmine's hand.

The Theron gave a raspy laugh and a sadistic grin as he cracked his knuckles menacingly. He threw a quick series of light punches at Carmine's face and body as he slowly turned. Carmine had great difficulty in keeping up with the blows, turning his body to get the best of his already sub-par defenses. Thankfully, his body armor was able to absorb a good chunk of the force behind the blows.

The Theron's actions allowed the Grenadier more than enough time to recover from the light injuries that he was given, and he joined the melee with sadistic glee and revenge burning in his eyes. The Grenadier sprinted towards Carmine with reckless abandon, delivering a surprise drop-kick to Carmine's back, dropping him to the ground and driving the breath from his lungs.

Carmine landed in a sprawl on the ground, barely able to shift his weight at the last moment to protect the infant in his arms. Naruto was really screaming now, and nothing could be done about it.

As Carmine tried to get to his feet, a heavy booted foot planted itself firmly on his back, forcing him back to the floor with a grunt. A second booted foot from the second Grub impacted his lowly armored kidneys. The force of the blow would have surely lifted him off the ground if not for one of the Locust holding him down with all their weight. The boot landed again in the same spot with a second devastating kick. Perfectly timed with the second Locust, the first jumped off of Carmine precisely when the second kick connected. With there being nothing pinning him to the floor, the kick lifted him off of the ground and rolled heavily to his back with a pained gasp.

Carmine did not get a moment of respite as the Grenadier attempted to deliver a diving elbow to his head, forcing Carmine to fight through his pain to dodge. He was able to stand weakly before he was sucker punched in the back of the head, knocking him forward and staggering him once again.

'This is bad, this is really, really bad!' Carmine thought to himself as he continued to get his ass handed to him. The bare-chested Locust had disappeared a minute ago, and his lack of presence made Carmine incredibly anxious, especially since Locust were not known to retreat. He needed to escape, but the helmed Grub had blocked every attempt at fleeing with powerful fists. He had no idea where his weapons had gone, having lost his pistol at the beginning of the fight and the rest of his weapons in the minutes afterwards. He still managed to protect Naruto from any of the blows, but Naruto had gone and screamed himself hoarse out of fear.

Carmine heard something behind him and turned around. He was just able to get his free arm up to block the Longshot rifle from taking off his head as the Grenadier swung it at him like it was a high-tech club. He screamed as the rifle fractured at least one of the bones in his forearm. Carmine fell to both knees as he screamed again, cradling the now-useless limb to the Locust's sadistic amusement.

The Grenadier approached and then ripped the baby out of Carmine's failing grasp as he delivered a heavy knee to his helmeted face, shattering the protective lenses on his helmet and knocking back onto his back, where he lay stunned.

'Is this how I die…?' Carmine thought to himself, mind clouded and ears ringing.

He saw the Grenadier tossing the infant to the Theron, who grinned with a sickening smirk.

'I…. I couldn't protect him…. I couldn't protect any of them…'

The Grenadier stood over of his prone form, straddling and turned him around. His heavily calloused hands gripping the back of his head with both hands.

'Ben…. Anthony... Momma…. it looks like I won't be making it back after all…'

The Grenadier lifted Carmine's head, bringing his upper body off the ground as well. He slammed Carmine's skull into the cobblestone street, his helmet the only thing keeping his face from becoming a red smear on the rock.

'I guess…. I couldn't keep that promise to you…'

His head impacted the ground again and his helmet cracked down the middle. Carmine could hear Naruto scream in fear and pain. He was powerless to do anything about it.

'I'm sorry…' Carmine closed his eyes as the Grenadier lifted him up for what would be the final blow.

A frightened scream of pain let loose from behind to join Naruto's, and the Grenadier immediately stayed his hands to look at the source. The Grenadier let go of Carmine in a rush and turned to face this oncoming threat, whatever it might be.

Carmine felt a something heavy land on his back. It was leaking. Faint screams behind him. He had to get up, to keep his promise! He struggled to move whatever was on him. With his good arm, Carmine tried to discern what the object was. Warm… wet… it that a knee? Was a lower body on him?

What actually was a few minutes felt like hours as Carmine slowly pushed himself up. He turned around slowly as his head and arm radiating pain. What he saw next was something that he just couldn't comprehend, surely it was an illusion brought upon by his most certain concussion.

In front of him was the separated upper and lower halves of the Theron, torn asunder with internal organs strewn around the street. The Grenadier was being held ten feet above the ground, impaled by two golden chains which swayed gracefully in the air, much like the branches of a willow tree caught in a gentle breeze. Carmine slowly drew his gaze downward, following the swaying chains in amazement as the still living Grenadier struggled futilely to escape. The chains appeared to be coming from Naruto's infant chest.

Carmine's muddled thoughts came to a halt as the two chains, seemingly their own volition, jerked heavily in opposite directions, ripping the remaining Locust in two pieces. With two meaty thwaps, the fresh corpse fell to the ground.

As if the chains were sentient, they immediately reacted to Carmine's presence and quickly poised threateningly, like a tail of a scorpion ready to strike. Carmine merely stood there dumbfounded and wide-eyed. As if sensing no hostile intent, the chains slowly slide back into Naruto's body and disappeared as if they were never there.

Carmine slowly staggered to Naruto's whimpering form on the cold stone road. Small amounts of blood flaked his tanned face, surely creating an unsettling image for anyone without a head injury. Attempting bend down to pick up Naruto resulted in Carmine collapsing on his hands and knees. His head felt like it was swimming in Imulsion as his stomach simultaneously felt like it had just consumed the entirety of his father's liquor cabinet.

Fighting back the urge to vomit, Carmine tenderly picked up Naruto. There were only two more blocks to go until he hit the Centaurs. He could make it! One foot forward. Two feet forward. Like a wasted college student, Carmine stumbled away, a smile on his face and determination in his muddled eyes. He would keep his promise, for now and for always. He always did.

I would like to apologize for any errors in grammar, flow, etc. I did not have access to my usual reviewer and I am a stickler when it comes to people editing my stuff.

Also, I will be trying to update more often. Shouldn't be too difficult, looking at the time gap between chapters 1 and 2.