Cloner4000: As awesome as it would be, no. :3 But he still gets some more awesomeness this chapter.
Two blurbs in one day. Wow, I'm bored.
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It was right when they made it to the forest's edge that they heard the machine gun.
Instinctively, Celes took a knee, eyes scanning what lay beyond the trees for the source of the noise. Pastoral meadows and hillsides were the first thing he noticed – a gravel road winding its leisurely way through and around them. In the distance, the beginnings of a small hamlet could be seen, the stone walls of cottages merely grey blobs the size of watermelon seeds.
There were no bullets shredding the underbrush around them, which was both fortunate and logical – the long echoes that the gun produced signified that the gun was a long distance away and most likely not pointed at them. The former medical student stood back up, looking to the Lieutenant for guidance.
Lieutenant Karst had already raised a pair of binoculars, produced from somewhere in his jacket, and was looking carefully at the village, especially at the hill that blocked the rest of it from view.
"Sir, do you think that the Gallians have made it this far already?" he asked. It was a logical enough thought.
Without looking down from his binoculars, the imperturbable Lieutenant gave his answer. "The Gallian regulars are the ones who are meant to push ahead. And they're late again. If they would just eliminate that incompetent, overly bombastic, General Damon, with the spirit and morale of the militia being what it is, they could actually win this war."
Celes blinked. Such a sentiment was one he hardly expected – the militia of Gallia could defeat the Imperial regulars? "With all due respect, sir, that's ridiculous. Weren't the regulars on the beaches?"
"Jacelern, those were the militia." Celes gaped. He hadn't expected that.
"In any case," Lieutenant Karst continued, "Gallia's policy of neutrality means that only career men and belligerents join the army, as they have little need for it. The militia are where the heart of their military strength is. On the other hand, we, the Empire, lean on our military strength for everything we do, conscripting our soldiers to supplement our numbers in times of war." Celes thought of his own termination of medical school – he'd been so close to getting his diploma at his young age, being a brilliant student. All that he would have needed to go through were a few bureaucratic tests, but in the end the war-loving headmaster, one who had never been a doctor himself, had selected him as one of those to be conscripted.
"You know, we could have attempted to ally with Gallia, but the Emperor decided it would be faster to invade it." Putting down the optics, he shrugged. "He would have been right for any other country."
Head spinning with the thoughts, Celes sighed. "So, are you going to tell me the plan yet?"
"Actually, no." It was all Celes could do to not slam his head into a tree in frustration, until he heard the second part of the Lieutenant's statement. "It's irrelevant now. That's not a Gallian Erma they're firing, that's a Uranus."
The lighter Imperial machinegun abruptly stopped firing, making the Lieutenant nod. "Yes, see, it's overheated. The Uranus does that if you don't fire in bursts. That's definitely Gallians operating it."
Celes put down his bag and reached for the binoculars – Lieutenant Karst gave them to him, and pointed to the hilltop. A cluster of tiny blue dots that Celes had thought were flowers danced around on top of it. Moving aside the gauze band over his left eye to fully use the optics, he suddenly saw the truth: a full dozen men in Gallian uniform looked down at the hamlet, a quartet of them attempting to cool a smoking machine gun with their canteens. They looked from side to side, pointing down to the village repeatedly. "Sir, what are they doing? I'm not hearing any return fire from our forces."
There was noise from the bag beside his leg; Celes looked down as the Lieutenant drew out the metal case that held the carbine, the ZM Kar "Francisca". As he pulled it out, Celes looked on quizzically. "Sir, just what are you –"
Lieutenant Karst loaded the weapon with one of the ten magazines in the box, leaned against a tree for stability, then raised it towards the hill, a laughable prospect. "I'm going to damage the barrel while it's still soft."
"Lieutenant, that's almost a mile away, you're not honestly–"
"No, I'm not, Jacelern. Put on the bandolier, load up, and be quiet."
"Sir, you know I can't –"
"Those aren't our men they're shooting. Those are civilians."
Celes opened his mouth to retort, but nothing came out, as full realization of what the Lieutenant was saying hit him. The reasons for the militia's actions were nonsensical at best, but the evidence – the lack of resistance – was clear enough.
A cold yet burning fury rose within his chest, a dragon that wanted to release itself. He bit off his mockery with a nod, filling up the leather belts with magazines as Lieutenant Karst took aim, carefully adjusting the sights and looking past them to gauge his range.
Right as he fired, Celes finished, and he brought the binoculars to his eyes again to view, just to see if the Lieutenant had done it once again. He shouldn't have doubted. A second later, the carbine burped, a small sound that couldn't have made it past a hundred meters. Another second later, the quartet of blue clad militia jumped away from their attempts. One of them looked carefully at the barrel, and slapped it – hopping away waving his hand in the air the next moment, the barrel still overheated. The other three looked around uneasily, but picked up weaponry – Imperial as well, ZM MPs – clumsily, as if unfamiliar with them, waving at the others to do so as well. Armed as such, they then all dashed towards the village, the crest of the hill swallowing them out of view.
The pieces all suddenly fit together. Gallians shooting civilians with Imperial weapons. "Dear Valkyur… those bastards," he hissed. "They plan on pinning these war crimes on us!"
His officer's response was only to hand him the carbine. "They'll have to exterminate the whole town then. Probably Darcsen haters if they're willing to do that, killing even the mere sympathizers in the town."
Celes nodded; it only made sense. Even outside of the Empire, which shamelessly forced the "darkhairs" to work in ragnite mines and camps – never mind the fact that black hair like he had was only superficially different to Darcsen dark indigo – they weren't liked at all around most of Europa. His own half-Darcsen background forced him to wear that gauze over his left eye at all times... except around certain people.
He affixed his lieutenant straight in the eye with a steely gaze, Lieutenant Karst's blue-eyed visage reflected in his mismatched one, both eyes brown – but one damningly streaked with Darcsen blue. "Let's kill these bastards, sir."
The Lieutenant raised an eyebrow. "There's a whole detachment of them, you know."
Celes weighed his life against the hamlet's; thoughts of women and children in the same broken state as his comrades at Marberry filled him with suicidal courage. "Even if we can't kill them, we can at least drive them off or buy time for some to escape."
The bespectacled man nodded, pulling out his personal sidearm from a concealed shoulder holster. "My sentiments exactly."
Seconds later they were jogging towards the village, with only a carbine and handgun to combat a dozen heavily armed men…
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Who's going to win? Actually, the answer should be pretty clear. :p
Celes and Lieutenant Karst don't have personal radios because the time period (technology of WWII) hadn't developed them yet. This is a major gripe I had with several other fics, so I'm making my stand here.
This is all still before "six hours later". There should be two or three more blurbs before we make it back to the Gallian perspective, and one or two more before Isara gets some story again (she's kind of, er, unconscious and dying right now)… so you Isara lovers, bear with me here!
If anything seems remotely off about the way things are happening here, lemme know! Reviews are awesome!
