Chapter 4: Battlefield Bad Company
A/N – I'll be mixing BBC 1 and 2 in this chapter, so don't get your fan boy underwear in a knot when I skip through the two games. Enjoy!
"A person would think that you'd learn to stop looking at me. Even a rat stops going through the door that electrocutes him after a couple tries," Shinji, once again, sat across the room as he tended to his throbbing cheek. Asuka, same as before, was currently flipping through the occasional document and massive amounts of porn, "You're not too bright, are you?"
"I don't do it on purpose, you don't need to hit me every time," she rolls her eyes silently with a smile, "And I think you should stop messing around. Misato said that they'll be coming to help us soon."
"We've been in here for over a day now, something tells me that their definition of 'working on it' is hooking his computer up to the MAGI and trying to inject us back into our bodies. Something also tells me that their plan will fail. If that anti-virus comes back, we'll have a much bigger problem than video games, so just be a good boy and shut up. I want to do a war game next, you know? Nearly all war games are either set in Vietnam or Germany… I'm hoping to get the latter. It'd be nice to take a visit, even if that visit is during the Nazi Regime," she soon comes across a piece of paper with a large grenade on it, with a smiley face as the pin, "If this isn't a war game, I don't know what is. Come on, let's go," with a sigh and keeping his eyes glued to the floor, Shinji walks over to her and places a hand on the paper.
"So you reckon the rainbow sprinkles are the way forward with the doughnut?" a man with a thick Texas accent broke the silence through the black as the two children opened their eyes to reveal themselves in a desert wearing typical American military outfits. They both had a pistol on their belt; while Asuka had a shotgun in her hands, Shinji held a large silenced sniper rifle.
"Absolutely, cuz then you get the different… um… who are you two?" a man wearing thick, almost comical glasses turns to see the two children.
"They're the new recruits, now shut your mouth Sweets before I shut it for you," a large black man up in front, clearly the leader, turns and yells at the man in a still-whispering voice, "I don't think I've had the pleasure of getting your names yet, but formalities are gonna have to wait. Sweets is the techie, Haggard is the white trash disciple, Marlowe is our overall badass, and I'm Redford. Friends call me Sarg. Mind telling me your names?" Shinji shivered as he saw Asuka smile.
"This is Trottel, and you can call me Asuka. Nice to meet you all," Sweets adjusts his glasses and walks over to Asuka with a curious look on his face.
"Your friend goes by an insult for a name?"
"Ah, du sprichst Deutsch. Das ist gut zu wisst."
"Actually, I only barely understand it. I was stationed in Germany for a while, but-" Haggard walks over, waving his arms in front of him.
"Oh hell no, I'm not gonna have some neo-Nazi watchin' my back. Sarg, this kid's ten years old, I bet she doesn't even know how to hold a gun," with the same smile, Asuka points the gun at him and cocked it. Returning her smile, Haggard looks down at her and places his finger in the barrel, "I take that back. She's cool with me."
"Will you all get over here?" Sarg continues his half-whisper, half-yell at Haggard and Sweets.
"Did ya drop somethin' Sarg?"
"This is supposed to be a stealth mission, damn it!" Haggard and Asuka exchange a glance before looking back at him and ask 'why?' in unison, "Forget it! Just breach that door!"
"Got it," the two new friends walk by the group as Haggard lugs a grenade, busting a large hole in the door. They both randomly fire into the dust as the sounds of several men yelling echoed, "So, Asuka, that right? Weird name."
"Better than Haggard. Sounds like something a cat coughs up," the three remaining men – and one boy – sigh as they follow the two, "Hey, where are we? The Middle East?" Haggard stops walking and scratches his head as he looks around, as if looking for a sign, "You have no idea, do you?"
"Hey Sarg, what country we in?" Asuka just lets out a small laugh as she empties another slug into a man literally holding a white flag across the room, "Dang girlie, you're ruthless, aren't ya?"
"Nah, I just don't like it when people piss me off. Don't do that and you'll be just fine in my book," with the building cleared out, she puts the shoulder of the gun on the ground and leans on it like a cane as she looks back at the ever-approaching company, "So, Trottel, you like this? It's a hell of a lot more interesting than devils or zombies, isn't it?"
"I-I… guess…" Sweets laughs as he slaps Shinji's back, almost sending him to the floor.
"Relax! War is only hell if you make it. We like to make it fun," Sweets couldn't have possibly put it better.
Asuka may have been in the mood for a shooting game, but she nowhere near expected what came out of this self-proclaimed Bad Company. Beyond just being a run and gunner, she was thrown into a world full of vigilantes – namely, the six of them – who only took orders as vaguely as possible from the higher ups. Neutralize a compound? Sure, not a problem – they didn't say anything about not blowing it up, after all. Haggard was the overall bomb specialist, though the word is used extremely loosely. All of his expertise came from a an extremely lucky life of managing to somehow not blow himself up while learning out in the field. He knew exactly how close he could stand to an active grenade so he could feel the shunt of the blast, yet feel no pain. How he came about this knowledge Asuka will never know, but he was happy to show anyone that was willing to learn. Sarg, Sweets, Trottel, and Marlowe weren't. She was. Asuka has actually grown quite fond of this world – they've spent the longest amount of time in this game beyond any other, but even then they've only been trapped no more than two days. No more of that giant robot bull she's grown up with. No, now she's on the front lines. Hell, she's more than on the front lines; she's in the belly of the beast. Somehow, this felt at home to her.
Shinji, on the other hand… he's a much different story. He's yet to so much as shoot his gun, and it was only roughly an hour ago that Sarg pointed out he didn't even have a magazine in the rifle. It wasn't that he was scared to hurt someone – it's a video game, after all, so anyone he 'kills' is just a bit of data on a hard drive – it was that he was genuinely scared of the gun itself. Beyond not knowing the slightest mechanic of the gun, he knew very well than guns backfire and have kickback. He wasn't exactly the strongest person alive, and while this may be a video game, he certainly can bleed, as Asuka demonstrated by running into a wall in the last game. Plus, even if he somehow wasn't scared, he'd still have no idea how to fire the thing. Luckily, though, there hasn't even been an opportunity for a sniper rifle just yet, so he's been able to hide his short comings fairly easily.
Though she'd never admit it, Asuka has, at least to an onlooker observing the situation, grown quite protective of her male companion. Seeing him as a little puppy of sorts, she always directs him to the nearest safe building or, at the very least, keep enemies from aiming at him. Miraculously, neither one of them had been shot a single time during the span of several gunfights. The day came to an end not too long ago, leaving the company split up into three tents, each tent containing two members. Asuka wasn't about to share a tent with another man she's only known for a couple days, leaving her stuck, as she would put it, with Shinji.
"I think something weird is going on. We never stay in a game this long," he stared up at the peak of the tent as he lay back on the sleeping bag, "Did you do something different?"
"No, but I don't mind it. I like it here, don't you?" he simply shrugged, "This is the first game where I'm not jumping out of my skin every five minutes. Plus, I think the game is actually pretty fun."
"Hey Führer, ya want some jerky?" Haggard 'knocked' at the tent, addressing Asuka by the name he came up with halfway through throwing a grenade.
"Stop calling me that, I'm not a Nazi. I bet you don't even know what that word means," a slight pause came from the silhouette behind the tent fabric.
"So that's a no to the jerky?"
"That's a no."
"Alright, more for me then. Hey Sweets," he trailed off talking, once again, about the eye patch he found.
"You two seem to have made a bond," staring up at the same point he was, she simply shrugged. Shinji let his head hang to the side to look at her and see something he hasn't witnessed in quite some time – her at rest. Eyes closed, hands behind her head, and breathing extremely slowly. Her usual perfect complexion has been smudged over the past few days with dirt and grime, and her hair, always free and waving, has been put up in a strong knot that holds it up and out of the way; it was essentially in a bun, but the design of the braid couldn't be called something so boring as 'bun', at least in Shinji's mind, "Does Paul know about the whole Eva thing? I know it's supposed to be secret, so…"
"He doesn't have a clue. He… thinks I'm in the marines. He saw me in my plug suit one day, and I had to lie," something about the tone in her voice made him second guess her every word. Something was certainly off, but he couldn't pinpoint it, "I'm still trying to come up with a lie as for why I'm stationed here."
"You're not telling me the whole truth, are you?"
"Not on your life, Third. I'm not an open book," the conversation ended with her rolling on her side. Well, at least, her end of the conversation ended. Shinji was far from done.
"It's not always a bad thing to open up, Asuka. You may not think so, but I think we're friends. Sure, not extremely close like some people, but at the very least we have each other's backs. When we're piloting, I trust you to help me when needed, and I hope you have that same trust for me. Even if we absolutely hated each other, that fact alone makes us closer than just two random people on the street," he follows her action and rolls onto his side, facing away from her, "When you're ready to talk, I'm always here to listen," he fell asleep within minutes, leaving her staring her hands, fallen randomly in front of her, for over an hour before finding the courage to finally sleep.
"Hey Sarg, you got a toothbrush I can borrow? I think mine melted," Shinji slowly woke up to the ever-noisy group of men.
"You stay away from my bag Haggard, understand me?"
"Sweets!"
"Not on your life, buddy," rubbing his eyes, he gets out of the sack of compressed feathers some would call a bed and stumbles out of the tent, tripping over Asuka's shotgun along the way, "Oh, morning Trottel. Sleep well?" Sweets was sitting in front of a fire warming up a few cans of beans set atop a grill plate.
"Been better. You?" morning formalities were always despised by the boy, but there's really no getting around them without coming across as a brute.
"Eh, you know, comme ci, comme ça," he wasn't quite sure what that meant, but was more focused on the breakfast in front of him, "Food'll be ready pretty soon. We have a big day today, so you better eat up while you can," that sentence could have been worded ten times better.
"What's the plan for today?" Sarg walks over, stopping right in front of the flames and looking down at a small pad of paper.
"Our demolitions expert is to infiltrate an enemy bunker, plant a bug, along with five pounds of C4 to destroy the communications," he drops the pad of paper into the fire and rubs his eyes with his thumb and index finger, "Problem is that we don't have an expert in anything. Haggard is as close as we got, and he's far from the silent type."
"I resent that very much," Haggard yells from his tent as he changed, "I can be quiet as snow falling on a lake."
"Very poetic, but a lie," Sweets hands Shinji an opened can as he spoke, "It'll have to be you, Sarg. I don't know how to handle C4, and I doubt Trottel here knows a damn thing about it," Sarg continues to rub his eyes in pure annoyance.
"I'll do it," rubbing her eye with the back of her wrist, Asuka walks out of the tent and grabs a can off the fire. She continues walking and eating until she stops in front of the ammo dump, "A guy like Haggard or Sarg will get noticed. I know these kind of soldiers – so long as I dress normal, they'll just think I'm there to pass around like an old bong. Brutes."
"You know how to work C4?" she snuffs at Sarg's question.
"I've been in the military longer than Haggard and Sweets put together. I'm probably more experienced in the stuff than you are," she pulls out a small duffle bag from below the large supply of randomly assorted ammunition. How she knew that was there was a mystery to everyone.
"Wow, girlie knows her way around, doesn't she? All the power to ya," everyone, Shinji aside, went back to eating as she rummaged through the bag. Shinji was left staring at her with wide eyes. After a few moments, he finally stands up and walks over to her, whispering as he spoke.
"Asuka, we don't know what would happen if you were to die in the game. Don't you think this is a little risky?" her eyes were… cold, and it scared him. She stared down at the bag as if it were the face of God, yet she couldn't care less.
"It's a game, I'll just respawn somewhere else if I die. But that's not my plan," she finally pulls out a plain white tank top and a pair of shorts from the bag, "Look and you die," lacking that certain amount of threatening attitude he's used to, she made a final comment before disappearing into the nearest tent to change. Within a minute, she emerged wearing the clothes and untying her hair, letting it all hang to the back as usual.
"Now's really not the time to be experimenting, please," he whispered in a tone that only she could hear, but she completely ignored it.
"One small problem. How do you suggest I get in there in the first place? I can't just walk in and say 'Hey, where is your communications center?' you know," Sarg handed her what looked like a black quarter, and she pocketed it like it was completely normal.
"That's your job to find out. Marlowe, give her the explosives," the silent man stood up, retreated to his tent, and soon came back out with a wallet-sized hunk of cream colored clay. Not quite enough to take out the whole bunker, but enough to cripple it to the outside world. She concealed this between her skin and pants right below her lower back, much like one would holster a gun, "We'll be on standby if you need anything. We can hear through the bug right now, so if things start to go south, say 'Too hot outside'," she crossed her arm and looked up at him with a small smirk, "You have something better?"
"Doesn't matter. So I guess I'm walking there?" the three men started to load up with ammunitions and weapons – all except for Shinji.
"Yeah, it's about three miles west of here. We'll keep an eye on you as you go, but we'll be stationed a few hundred yards out. Trottel, you'll be scoping out with your sniper as she goes," it took him a moment, but he finally spoke up.
"Actually, why don't I go in with her?" this earned odd looks from everyone, including Asuka, "Two heads are better than one. Plus, Marlowe's a better shot than me anyway, I wouldn't be any use to you on a rifle," Sarg threw his hands up in annoyance as the three men started walking away.
"Doesn't matter to me, just get it done. Due west, get going," Asuka let out an aggravated sigh as they began to walk.
"I wanted to go alone, damn it. Why can't you ever mind your own business?" he had no direct response to her question, but he had his own questions.
"Why are you acting like this all of the sudden? You know this is stupid, so why do it?" no response, "You're being childish. Just talk to me!" still nothing, "Was it something I said?" in a quick motion, she whips around and slaps him with more force than she has in the past – back then, she was restraining herself. Haggard, roughly fifty meters away, began laughing like a fool.
A/N – Yeah, so, I wanted to put too much in this game for one chapter, so the next chapter will most likely be half this game, and half a flash game from the internet. Keep those suggestions coming! As per the request of DrTempo, Duke Nukem Forever is on the list. This 'list' I'm talking about is below, for those of you keeping track. It's not in any particular order. Finally, check out my new fic, Rei's Fascination. See you all soon, and keep on keepin' on!
List of future chapters: Duke Nukem Forever, Monster Hunter, Bloodrayne, Assassin's Creed, Grand Theft Auto (probably San Andreas), and I Wanna be the Guy.
List of games I will not be doing: Metal Gear Solid (so stop suggesting it!), any more Resident Evil, any racing game at all, any sports game, and probably no more survivor horror (I've already done two).
Summary of Bad Company: This is your run of the mill FPS with some humor thrown into it. Sarg is, as his name implies, the sergeant of this company and is a serious, long time veteran. He's about the only serious one in the group. Marlowe is slightly serious, but is essentially the hero of the whole company. Think of Marlowe as Superman in Justice League. Haggard is a die-hard Texan with a love for blowing crap up. Finally, Sweets only joined the military for a scholarship, but turned out to love it. Don't worry about the plots in the first and second games, because I won't be dealing with them.