Finally, after four years, I'm finally writing a story with Jess from Advance Wars. It's always been one of my goals to take the abandoned no-one-gives-a-damn section that started me off and give it something longer, a story worth reading, starring a character that has always been a random favorite in our favorite artillery-carrying resupplying redheaded tank commander.

This came from a short story, that is now a longer story, which may finish between 20-30k words, which would be a new record for me to be honest. At the very least, it matches Paradigms. For the same low-coverage game that barely anyone cares about, where this story will sit for months before a new page is started.

It's lonely here. Send some love. I'm gonna keep working on this.

Disclaimer: I own nothing, regret nothing, and let them forget nothing, but seeing as no one posts here, you won't have to remember- I'll always be front page!

I need a smoke.

Can't say what exactly I need one for. No more war. No more drama. Not much of anything. I feel like I've got it together overall. No drinking problems, no broken relationships (not hard to avoid going down from zero), no abysmal spending habits, and certainly no caving in and buying a pet. I remember going through a pack a day when we were finishing up the Omega Ruins conflict. So at least I've pared it down to two or three cigs a day. Even then, that's too much, I feel. I really should stop. The smoke smells like the ruins of a bloody battlefield, where there was more smoke than Earth. I think the only reason I need them is because when I was a teenager someone convinced me it was what the cool kids did.

I look up from the desk and lock my computer for the time being. I can trust my fellow Green Earth commanders not to get into my shit, but I can't trust everyone. Hell, even then the person I'm worried about could hack into it faster than I could light up even if I set up a novel as my password, so I don't know why I bother. An ounce of prevention, I guess.

Besides, if she hasn't yet, she probably won't now. Not much to see that she doesn't already know.

I tell Eagle, "I'm gonna have a smoke." He doesn't even look up from his desk, just waving me off. Typical Eagle, but I've come to expect it. I wave back derisively, preparing to leave.

Drake, on the other hand, looks up at me as though he's just remembered something. "Jess, m'lass, before you head out, I meant to ask you about that road plan. How far along have you gotten?"

I close my eyes. Truth be told, I have made minimal progress on the road map today. I think I've gotten lax with time, although war will take a lot out of you. Before I can admit my shortcomings, Drake continues. "Oh! Never you mind, I got your email. Looks as spit-shined as a sub's surface just skimming it. Great work."

I know I must look like a fawn in the eyes of a tank brigade, but I nod cordially- probably more like I've been uppercut, in retrospect, but the intention was there- and I look towards the door. Drake shouts back, "take care!" I give him a genial wave, but I still head towards the door before he can ask me to do anything else. I think my work ethic also needs a spit-shine if it's scraping that of a self-absorbed teenager temp.

Speaking of which.

I open the door and climb the final set of utility stairs. The stairwell ends at a door, no alternate path available. Perfect. Just where I need to be. I open the door and head outside onto the HQ's rooftop. To absolutely no surprise, there she is on the balcony edge, perilously sitting above all of Smaragd City, typing like a madman on her laptop hooked up to little more than company wi-fi. Well, that, and probably everything with a technological pulse in a five-block radius.

At the very least, she's good at what she does.

"About time," she says, not even looking up. "I was getting bored."

"Around the time you start doing other peoples' work, I get the feeling."

As I take a seat next to her, she finally looks up, her unkempt spiky afro bobbing with her and nearly taking my eye out. "To be fair, you weren't doing your work either," she replies, sticking her tongue out with all of the maturity I expected out of her.

"Stay classy, Lash."

"Stay boring, Jess."

Our dynamic was forged as soon as I tried to teach her table manners. I'd not had any more involving a companion than a labrador, but I was the only one who figured that talking to our former enemy might make them more liable to be on our side, so I tried to help endear her to others. Needless to say, endearing Lash to others is not how you work with Lash. From there on, I saw her as the chaos child with a strained upbringing as a war horse, and she saw me as General Stuffybritches, murderer of all things fun and unique.

I guess you could say we've reached an understanding.

I reach into my suit pocket and pull out the cigarettes. Lash sticks her tongue out again; not out of defiance, but out of disgust. "Yuck," she vocalizes. "I forgot about that."

I shrug, not paying her complaints mind, mostly because I get enough of it from myself. I light up and she scurries away so swiftly I'm surprised she didn't fall off the building. She covers her face like a gas mask and complains, "let me know when you're done. Ick."

I take a drag. "At least the cigarette has a filter."

"Hardy har," I hear through her cupped hands. Her eyes, as expressive as ever, look poised to stab me in the hands. Her laptop is still on the balcony, untouched and unsecured. I have half a mind to tell her to take care of that before it falls over, but I decide to finish my cigarette first. As I smoke, the evening air brushes the side of my face, as if to compensate for the unrefined raw feeling in this old, tired throat of mine.

Knowing Lash is still looking on in impatience and abhorrence, I make sure to take an extra long drag for my final performance, exhaling smoke into the air like a wolf howling at the moon. It works. Lash giggles, slapping her forehead. "You're such a loser."

I extinguish my cigarette with my boot. "I could be in the circus with an act like that."

"You're not entirely boring after all," she admits, uncupping her mouth. "You're just a total nerd."

I return to the balcony on the near side of the computer. Speaking of. "I'm pretty sure someone who hacked my computer to do my work for the fun of it has no right to call someone a nerd." Before she nearly leaps the distance between us, I pick up the computer. Immediately her pupils dilate from a look of sheer terror, and she lunges for the computer. "Relax," I insist. "I'm not gonna cheat ya. I just want to see what you've done with my work."

Being distracted by my smoke was enough to make me forget to consider the consequences of having Lash try and do intricate planning. Her responsibility was to fix Smaragd's frayed technological infrastructure, but that's a job that relies on the speed of structural rebuilding. Lash has the know-how, but she alone can't move mountains, so that leads to her skulking the halls of our current HQ, an irritable gypsy in a land whose citizens still don't forget that she was once a participant in its destruction; a puppet with the illusion of free will who only knew how to break things. Eagle certainly hasn't forgotten, and try as Drake might to be cordial to our guest consultant, there's definitely an air of unease around him as well.

It's a good thing I had my smoke, because the idea makes me anxious just thinking about it, and Lash snatching away the computer with such force she nearly knocks me off the building to retrieve it is no help. A little clicking and scrambled typing commences before she hands the computer back to me. It appears as though Lash has a secret. Being Lash, it's likely nothing too universe-threatening seeing as she lured me out here in the first place, and being Lash, it's likely that I will never find out as long as I live.

Regardless, I let her guide me through the road plan.

"Trust me, chica, terrain is my thing," she says, not unlike many technological pitchmen I've watched videos of in the past. "Techy stuff is good but believe it or not I'm a nature chick at heart. Give me an empty society and I'll build a city in a day. Down here in the south peak, a lot of the highways were run through the mountain ranges, not around. But the bright side to having bombs thrown all over the place is that it leaves a lot of good flatland to rebuild along. So you're welcome for that."

I roll my eyes. "We are forever in your debt." She bristles- although it could just be her afro I'm feeling again- but doesn't clam up. I hope she knows that I mean it as a joke.

She resumes her routine. "Anyway, nothing terraforms the Earth like brutal conquestial war. Because of that, when you rebuild, you don't consider where the old roads were. If they're gone and the places they went are gone, who cares. Take the new Earth and build new roads to build new cities with. Leave some of the old roads alone for now. They're archaic. Old news. Let forests and nature take its place. Maybe help it out a bit, but who knows? I think by the fact that we humans are so damn war-like we've told nature we don't deserve this. It's better on its own anyways."

Something's off in that idea. "Lash, we didn't destroy Green Earth. That's far against the point."

Lash wrinkles her nose. "Minor technicalities. I'm talking big picture."

"No, you see," I continue in the faint hopes of getting my point across. "Green Earth is still our land. We didn't do anything to lose it. We were trying to defend all the broken roads that you guys were blowing up. That's why you guys lost. Are you blanking on that?"

She puts her hands up. "Look, I'm just trying to explain my way to help out, okay? You don't need to get hung up on semantics. I'm not giving a lect-"

Ugh. "But we're doing this the Green Earth way, okay? Not the Lash way. I drove through these roads for years with my unit, so trust me. You're-"

"I'm not doing it the Lash way! I'm trying to give you a plan, cause Lord knows you weren't coming up with-"

"I've lived here all my life," I explain sternly, trying to end the argument. "I've been in the army since I was legal. I think I know a bit about being in Green Earth, so take my word for this."

"Then why did you have me help you?" Great, she's shouting now.

"I didn't ask for your help on the roads!" I shout back. Good game, Jess.

"Fine!" she shouts, slamming the computer shut and storming away with it. "You freakin' do it! Take that jack-crap knowledge of yours and put it to use! Try and make more than a few roads an hour!"

"That I will," I fire back, watching her throw open the door back downstairs. It slams behind her, cutting off the echo of her boots clanking down the concrete stairs. I sigh and light another smoke. I thought I knew I was getting myself into. I thought I could control the daft girl. Turns out that I am still not very good with people.

I light another smoke and stare down at the city. If you look closely enough, it seems proper. The buildings look solid, as if nothing had ever gone wrong in Green Earth's capital. Just don't look too far out- that's when reality sets in. Blotches of colorless dirt where people used to live; torn up buildings that have yet to be magically reconstructed, and a boundary far more constricting than what once was here. The city used to be endless, but nothing lasts forever.

Seeing the smoke above the city brings back enough sordid memories that should make me want to vomit just thinking about them, but it's all desensitized me to the point where I fear I wouldn't react if one of the buildings was lit on fire. I think the only thing that scares me anymore is the fact that nothing else scares me anymore.

~MoD~

"Jess, can I have a word with you, if you'd be so kind?"

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Drake caught on with little effort the source of the road map. He turns the screen to me as I walk in, snuffing my smoke in a nearby ashtray. I begin to explain myself, saying "I honestly didn't know what happened until it was too late."

He nods. Eagle gives a sideways glance to both of us, much more eager to listen than to participate. Drake points to the screen, clicking on one of the smaller roads. An informational bubble pops up, revealing the name. I smirk, and Eagle's eyebrow arches as he reads it.

"Can't fault her for her message," I admit.

Eagle sneers. "Perhaps that's why you don't have a child do an adult's work."

"Meanwhile you are employed quite handily here," I fire back.

Drake puts his hand up to prevent yet another bout of bickering from between the two of us. "It's easily fixable; I'd just rather not christen one of our thoroughfare the Eagle's Testicles Memorial Highway."

They might not, but I let it go. Eagle again complains. "That girl has the poise of a wounded frog. Remind me why we trust her with anything, Red?"

Drake cuts in before I say something that would curtail any bloodthirst. "Eagle, we've been over this. I don't think Javier is much of a captain for technological work, and Sonja is clearly occupied with Yellow Comet. Lash is our only option. It's risky work, but beggars can't be choosers."

I nod. "Precisely."

"However," Drake continued, "I think I might need to give her a talk about not trying to do others' work for them. Even if it is a genuine attempt to help, and given this is Lash I shan't say, a helmsman is little good in the crow's nest."

I nod again. "We'd gotten into this a bit after my smoke. I tried to convince her that it was too skeletal for the country. She saw otherwise, but I believe she'll be too stubborn to help any further."

"That'd be beneficial," Drake says. "We need to stick to what we know. There's a reason I'm not examining air traffic, after all." I begin to walk back to my desk, hearing him finish with, "I trust your judgment to make these roads perfect moreso than Lash's, so don't worry about her."

"Your judgment for outsourced work leaves much to be desired, however," Eagle can't prevent himself from adding. I'd fire back, but in some ways, I can't help but admit he has a point. I slip my headphones on and prepare to start fixing what was fudged with, only to find that the entire map was wiped completely clean except for one main thoroughfare- a straight line from here to Brahm's Port, which I vaguely remember being where my forces sunk Lash's battleship brigade. I click it, my bewildered expression staring me down in the thin reflection of the computer.

"This whole map needs a fresh start. Here you go. Do it right. Nerd."

Joy to the world, the Lord has come. I'm having to start from day zero.

I hold my head in my hands. Fantastic. This is my reward for tangling with a madwoman. From our very first interaction I knew in the back of my head what this glass half shattered could do to me. I just didn't expect her to actually do it.