A/N: So this chapter was meant to cover the time between the first day and the first task. Instead, my brain divided by zero and took a detour through Rose's past. Not exactly a flashback (or retcon for the more realistically inclined amongst you), but a general insight into the crapsack world Panem would be, given that it's pretty much a future that has more in common with a post-apocalyptic wasteland than anything else. But hey, who am I to complain? I get to flesh out Rose as a character, you get some insights into what goes in Rose's head (lucky you) and take a break from the standard boring bits preceding the first task. Plus, I have to come up with a good excuse for killing some characters off, which takes a while... Yeah, she could technically kill anyone impeding the completion of her tasks, so this counts as set-up of a sort. Seriously though, she's evil. She's going to kill people. Just not yet. So here you go, divergence where none of us, including my humbly omnipotent self, were expecting it. Enjoy.

"So let me get this straight..." The green-eyed psycho sitting next to her said before staring at the far wall for a few moments. "In your first year, a troll makes its way into the school and kills the defense professor's teaching assistant. And it just so happens that the defense teacher hisself carried the remains of the magical version of a terrorist mastermind on the back of his skull, a guy who tried to kill you and yer friends at the end of the year."

Hermione nodded.

"Then, you have a giant snake invading the school for your second year." Rose sighed. "In your third year, you have what? Demons? Attack the entire school year round." Hermione nodded again. "In your fourth year, you get a, what did you call her, 'fascist bitch' as headmistress who spent most of her time torturing kids at random."

Hermione shivered, lifting her left hand to show faint scars that read I shall not plan sedition in a nice cursive script.

"Awesome body art, by the way." Hermione just glared at her. "Moving on... then last year, nothing happened. At all."

"Nothing I know of. Nothing that's been reported. But I'm sure something happened." the brunette insisted louder than she intended to.

"Now c'mon, ain't that a mite paranoid?"

"It's not paranoia, it's Bayesian statistics." Hermione huffed, her lips spreading into a reluctant and huffy smile.

"Right. And the old man said this place was the safest in all magical Britain. Sure it is." Rose shook her head as she kept playing with the steak knife as if it was her favourite plushy doll.

"Well, he's right in his own weird way." the girl admitted. "I mean, things have been bad, but no-one's died yet. And when you consider the fatality statistics amongst home-schooled wizards & witches, that is quite the achievement."

"Right. Fuck. And miss pale n blue agrees too." She sighed as she closed her eyes and held on to Dumbledore's old wand. It kept bugging Hermione, that wand. It looked familiar. She'd heard or read of it somewhere before. "You know" Rose said, "Maybe I should tell you one of my stories now."

"What stories?" The genius little Gryffindor asked, though Snow's smile made her regret asking even before she opened her mouth.

"So you guys think you had it tough, huh? Well, before I tell you, here's a little story that should clue you in. It all started during my first tour of duty out of training camp..."

Rose cursed under her breath as the ATV lurched off the rotting asphalt cover of a dead highway. She was incredibly uncomfortable, hunched in the ground car between the two heavy gunners and staring at a rookie that was even greener than her. The fact that said rookie just happened to be the squad's replacement CO was not inspiring her with any confidence at all.

Her and her team were due south to intercept a bandit column a drone had picked on long-range scan. Normally, the 15-man defense specialist team wouldn't go anywhere near the front line until some dumb bastard laid siege to a District settlement, but the bandit's numbers and use of horses had forced the militia's hand. They were headed for an abandoned outpost where they were expected to fort up and hold position until the rest of the unit got its ass into gear. Could someone say glorious last stand, please?

She fastened her helmet a bit more and checked her rifle again. She'd opted out of the standard battle rifle-pistol loadout, trading the chrome-plated piece of automatic crap for a semi-automatic rifle holding a 30-round box magazine filled with the old 7.62 rounds her arms instructor had raved on about at camp & a pistol that, while pretty damn clunky by itself, fired three round bursts and, above all else, remained silent even with the standard militia-issue rounds she'd gotten in her kit. That was the good news.

Bad news was that her team's corporal, upon seeing what she was packing, had up and volunteered her as the designated base scout. Dickhead.

"How much longer?" Someone screamed over the sound of the ground-car engine's tortured uphill revving.

"Almost there private. Keep your dick in your pants, why don'tcha?" Sarge replied in his normal, 'I-will-kick-your-ass-before-feeding-it-to-a-hellhound voice. The ATV started to slow from a vibrating vomitorium down to a lurching tin boat. "Alright bitches, I want a final gear check done in the next five. Snow and Tuchmann, take point and check the base. Everyone else, I want this piece of shit unloaded and fully camo'ed before we get gone in ten. Understood?"

"Yes sir." A chorus of voices answered back.

"What was that? I didn't hear a word you dickheads just said!"

"YES SARGE!"

"That's more like it! Get a move on! Private Snow, Private Tuchmann, off your ass and shimmy to the door NOW!"

"YESSIR" Rose answered, hooking on her backpack as she struggled to stay upright in the tumble dryer that was a groundcar.

"And a bit less of the smartass if you please, princesses! Now get gone!"

It was raining on the barren plains. A titanic battle forgotten by all but the nerdiest of pre-Dark historians had torn up the land here, leaving a scarred wound where a mighty forest once stood. Two specks could be seen moving away from a slightly larger blot, their advance hindered by the petrified hulks of dead trees and metallic debris whose function had been long since lost to time.

A few minutes into their advance, the two stopped and hunkered behind a rusting hulk. "It's freezing out here!" Tuchmann exclaimed, extending her hand to Snow. "Elizabeth."

"Rose." She shook the other girl's hand. "How do we do this?"

"Dunno." The other girl shrugged. "I've only been doing this for a few weeks, ya know."

"Fuck." Rose swore. "Right, the way I used to do it was to move around and then check out the target from the left side."

Tuchmann looked at her askance. "Really? Where the hell did you learn to do that? Kindergarten?"

"The Academy in District One." Rose said, shrugging off the age jab. "Never done it with a follower before."

"Wow, a dropout?"

"No, graduate."

"Sheeit girl. Really?" Elizabeth said, impressed. "What the fuck are you doing out in buttfuck nowhere then."

"Getting some life experience. Follow me and we'll do this right."

"Okay. Lead on, grad girl." The two moved out, fastening their packs as they went.

The base was not what you would call imposing from afar. It was little more than a bunch of boxes stacked next to each other surrounded by a mud embankment and, for some weird reason, a dried up moat. Where the hell the previous occupants had found enough water to keep it topped up mystified the two scouts as they looked through their field glasses.

"See anything?"

"Nah. Looks like it's clear. Check the surrounds."

"Right. Ambush?"

"Possibly. Got this gut feeling." Rose shrugged. "Never let me down before."

"Okay." Liz looked away from the compound and scanned the landscape through the rain. "Sweet fuck all so far. Phone it in."

Rose looked at her. "We aren't finished with the survey yet, though."

"Don't worry. My last scout partner always phoned it in early."

"Okay." Rose pulled out her comm beacon. No sense in arguing with the slightly more experienced rookie. "Scout two to group leader. Group leader, do you read?"

"Loud and clear, princess." a grainy voice came over the beacon. "What's up?"

"Looks clear so far. No contact or movement out here, sarge. Looks dead." Rose said as she scanned the area more intently. "Clear to move up as far as we're concerned."

"Right. Scouts, move up and secure base. Snow, Tuchmann, move out."

"Copy sarge. Moving out and securing base. Scout two out."

"Don't fucking die out there princess. If I get stuck sucking ass in the south, I'll raise your ugly face from the dead and kick it 'til you're not a virgin anymore. Do I make myself clear?"

Rose smiled. "Yessir. Over and out." She stashed the beacon back in its pocket. "Shit." She took one last look at the landscape around her. Broken stumps, blackened rubble, molten metal as far as the eye could see. A stray line of light crossed through the mists, briefly illuminating a hill in the distance. Ash covered everything, the fine particles long since baked into a layer of grey rock that choked the once lush topsoil. "Liz?" she asked, looking at her blonde companion. "Liz. Tuchmann."

"Huh?"

"You heard the man. We're moving."

Two specks moved across the desolate landscape, heading towards a ring of brown in the middle of a dead sea of grey.

You could say anything about the outside world, but you had to acknowledge that the world within the abandoned base was worse. Whatever happened there, however long ago it had been, the people who used to be there hadn't had time to clear out. The courtyard was strewn with human remains, bones jutting out of the ground at odd angles sharing space with rusted guns. The charnel house feel led to odd geometries all around, square buildings adorned with sharply jutting ribcages, pallets and boxes rotted through leaning against them. It felt more like an abandoned mausoleum than a nominally active military base.

Rose put on a gas mask, signalling Liz to follow suit before hitting her mask's comm button.

"Fuck me." a scared, husky voice came over the squad's commLAN. "What the fuck happened here?"

"Dunno. Looks like a gas attack." Another voice came through. "Snow, Sarge's three minutes out. Take Tuchmann and head for the CIC first."

"Roger that. Get that, Liz? Liz?" She turned around and checked on Tuchmann. The girl was fumbling with a wire. Broken connection then. She clapped her hands together, signalling for Liz to follow her lead.

The two headed deeper into the base, their boots crunching as they stepped on the buried skeletons underfoot. Their destination was a bulbous outgrowth in the centre of the camp, looking more like a mushroom than the box-like barracks they passed. No sound came over the aural interface, leaving the two scouts to simmer in the sounds of crunching and breathing they generated themselves.

The door to the CIC leant outwards, looking like it was either rotting off its hinges or had been blown open from the inside. Rose entered into the dark space of the circular chamber, a gimlet eye taking in the hulking machinery that may or may not still work when Sarge activated it. "There was a fight here." She reported as she passed her hand over the wall, the dust coating revealing bullet holes camouflaged by the grime. She spied a terminal near the main desk, its monitor shot through with a bullet but the desktop on the side was still pristine. A light blinked on and off on it. "Possible active terminal. Jackpot guys."

A jolt hit her from behind, causing Rose to bring her pistol up and point it behind her. Liz reared back, hands held up in fright. Snow lowers her pistol and takes her mask off, taking in the smell of mould, death and decay. "It's safe Tuchmann."

Liz takes her own mask off and grimaces at the putrid stench. "Dear god. It smells exactly as bad as I imagined it to."

"Yeah yeah. Check the equipment for damage. I'm off to greet Sarge."

"And why would I do that?"

"Because I haven't taken tech training yet. You probably haven't either, but I'm more likely to blow shit up than I am to do it right. That leaves you."

"Alright. But you so owe me a twinkie for this."

"Sure thing. Now git. The others aren't far behind now."

"Well well well. In all my years living in shitholes, I never thought that I'd end up here. This, ladies, is a PALACE! It's a HAVEN in the middle of this shit-blasted HELL!" The Sergeant bellowed to his minions. "Now sure, there'll be a bit of a cleanup for us, but that's what we're here for. Because we are the BEST Panem has to offer. The BADASSES come to save those District bitches from whoring themselves out to the SCUM whose asses we are gonna KICK straight back to the barrens. Can I hear a HELL YEAH?"

"Hell yeah!"

"I didn't hear you!"

"HELL YEAH SIR!"

"That's it! Now get moving! Scunner, Jeunesse, set up defensive positions. Harkness, Vergil, you're on barracks duty. Aurelius, Abhorsen, latrines – and don't let me catch you playing bonecards again you little bastards! Timochenko, Cori, I want that generator up and running before dark. Snow, Tuchmann, check the area for radiation pockets. I do NOT want to lose another dumbass because someone didn't bother to switch on their dosimeter. The rest of you, with me! I've got work for you."

Off to the side, the nominal commanding officer just nodded to Sarge, more interested in what the drone's feed was telling him than what his command was up to. Nobody looked in his direction except for Rose. The boy's hands were shaking.

It had been three days since the group had arrived at the boneyard. Fifteen people labouring tirelessly had made fair work of the corpses and debris left behind by whatever attack had killed them, but little else of note had happened since their arrival.

That is, until the sentries picked up a glint in the sky.

"Is it one of ours?"

"Bird's a neg on the transponder sir. Signal's pre-Dark Times too. Looks like an enemy bogy."

"Fuck. They've got a drone?"

"Good one too. Looks like an old P-38D."

"Missile capable?"

"Yeah, but this bird ain't packing. Coming up with zilch on radiation and chem trail analysis. Looks like she's scouting."

"... Get the Sarge in here. Things are about to go real bad."

"Snow!" The dulcet tones of Sarge in full combat mode shot through the musty interior of the barracks. "Get your ass in gear bitch."

"Yessir, right away sir." A rapidly waking Snow slurred out as she got out of bed. "Time for my shift sir?"

"Hell no. Cori just picked up an enemy drone on radar. Looks like playtime's over."

And, judging by what her watch was telling her, just two hours after conking off. "Fucking great." She intoned, dressing in her gear as quickly as she could. Picking up her rifle and loading it, she frowned at Sarge's expression. "So what's the plan?"

"Plan? Ha!" The mustachioed asshole-in-chief snorted. "We man a gun nest each and kiss our asses goodbye soldier. Nothin' else to it."

"Great. Tuchmann with me again?"

"Nah, she's off on a reccy. You get to pair up with the LT. Do me a favour and show him the ropes before I put a cap in his ass please. He's been pissing me off no end and you've got enough experience with dickheads to not do the same too quickly. I fucking hate rookie commanders. Think they know shit."

"And it's up to me to show him how little he knows? Thanks sarge, you're a real doll you are."

"Shut it private. You've killed enough little shits like him to know the score. Just make sure he doesn't end up breathing through his asshole and there'll be a promotion in the oh-so-distant future of tomorrow... IF he survives."

Well, it wasn't like she was doing anything else today. Except maybe shoot bandits. But hey, she wasn't that lucky, it seemed.

"Private Snow reporting for duty s-"

"Shh." The lieutenant hissed, one hand holding headphones to his head while the other cradled a datapad, his attention fixed on the blue-green screen's readout. "I'll be with you in a moment, Snow."

"Yes sir." She said and wandered over to the nest's main armament to check the ammo feed.

The main problem Panem had in relation to its militia was the very reason for the militia's existence; paranoia. Panem's peacekeeping force and mobile Army brigades were incredibly advanced and highly trained fighting units in their own right, but that also tended to limit their usefulness on 'peacekeeping' missions. Panem could not afford to risk the Districts getting their hands on large numbers of advanced weapons, which meant that neither of the regular forces were fielded in anything other than cases involving direct threats to Panem itself. Anything else fell under the responsibility of the militia.

However, Panem didn't want to turn the militia into a threat to the other branches of the military, so what the militiamen were armed with would have been familiar to any soldier from the early 21st century. Rifles, grenade launchers, tanks, LAVs, drones, they had them all. But these weapons had nothing on the stuff the regular units had access too and were all too often decades beyond their retirement date. The militia made up for it in sheer weight of numbers, but the tech disparity was often the root cause for the need for such numbers in the first place. Then again, it was familiar and, in the centuries since their introduction, the tactics that grew up around these weapons had become known to almost anyone who paid even the slightest bit of attention to military matters.

So it was that, in an age where orbital kinetic kill vehicles and plasma weaponry was old hat, Rose and her group were stuck fielding weapons that hadn't changed in centuries.

She sighed as she lifted the omni-launcher's ammo box off its railing and adjusted the feed mechanism. She'd played with toys that were more sophisticated than this when she was still in District school. Hell, her Tribute trainee bow was better engineered than this piece of crap. Still, it was all she had.

"You were saying, private Snow?"

"Sir, reporting for duty sir." She said, not glancing up from her checking of the trigger array. "Sergeant Hawthorne sends his regards and reports that all units will be battle-ready in five minutes sir."

"Good, good." The boy swallowed as he adjusted his glasses. "Private, have you ever been in combat before?"

"Does being involved in a life-or-death struggle against other tribute trainees count sir?"

"Ah-yes. Dropout then?"

"No sir. Graduate."

The lieutenant looked more relaxed all of a sudden. "Dear me. And how old were you when you graduated?"

"Fourteen sir." The only sound that could be heard was her hitting the barrel cooling system with her gloved fist. "Been a few months now."

"Ah. Good. Good. Any advice you could impart me private?"

Rose looked at her commanding officer. Her suddenly very young-looking and nervous commanding officer. "In my experience? Dodge the arrows, sir. They're a bitch to get out without killing yourself."

"That may be of limited use to us today private, haha. I daresay that dodging a bullet's a bit harder, heh."

"Dunno sir. Never been shot at with a gun sir."

"Ah." The lieutenant's hands shook visibly. "Well, I daresay that we're going to be learning new things together today."

Rose said nothing as she lifted the launcher back onto its tripod. They were dead. What else was new?

The rain started again. The defenders groaned as one. Defending a shitheap barely fit for temporary habitation was bad enough. Doing so when it was cold, wet and you couldn't see beyond the perimeter line without field glasses was jumping to the wrong side of miserable. Spotlights came online, searching the ground for any wannabe infiltrators. Rose chucked her vision sensors onto the ground. What with the heavy downpour and rising mists, neither IR or heat vision would do her any good for the time being.

The LT (and what kind of name was Trop anyway?) kept focusing on his pad, seemingly determined to escape the impending battle through the miracle of communications technology. Not that it would do him any good; escapism was not, in Rose's experience, conductive to survival. She doubted whether that lesson had been invalidated by her moving from the Arenas to an active battlefield. She just shook her head and kept watch, using her rifle's quick-mount scope as a mini-field glass.

Lieutenant Trop looked up from the pad in his hand. "Alright private, give me a sit-rep." He said nervously.

"Sir, no sight of the Bandits at this time sir. Automatic launcher is armed and ready, killbox is established and nest is secure sir."

"Give me an outline of the killbox private." Trop ordered as he moved next to her.

"Yes sir." Rose said, doing a quick scan of the area in front of her. "Farthest border is set at the perimeter line over there." She pointed at the area where the rusty remnants of a fence stood, barely noticeable in the moisture-induced haze. "South boundary is that outcropping over there." She moved her finger to the far left, her index coming to rest on a large pack of boulders. "North boundary is the old vehicle over there." She pointed right, drawing attention to the outline of another of this place's ubiquitous rusting hulks. "Border markers are there, there there and there." She quickly pointed to an odd variety of border markers that helped tell her how far away the enemy was; a deadened shrub at two hundred metres, a pack of rocks at one-fifty, a skeleton at a hundred metres and a pile of bricks at fifty.

"Good work private."

"Thank you sir-wait, I hear something." A distant rumble could be heard in the mists. An engine revved. "LT, why is the ATV active?"

Trop blanched. "That's not the ATV." He fumbled with his comm beacon until the whine of static died down. "Sergeant, we have contact. Unconfirmed as to number or type, but mechanical in nature. Ready the launchers. Pass spotlight control over to the gunners. They'll need to see what they're aiming at after all, haha."

"Confirmed sir, launchers armed and ready, spotlights slaved to launcher's targeting systems." The abnormally calm voice of Sarge reported before sighing. "Godspeed sir."

"Thank you sergeant. Stay safe out there." He was shaking violently now, his beacon dropping to the nest's dirt floor as he got himself back under control. After a brief interval, he finally bent and retrieved his beacon. "Right, Rose, you're on spotting duty. Find that vehicle and tell me where to fire."

"Yes sir." Rose intoned as she lifted her rifle up again, trying to ignore how her shaking hands made using the scope more difficult. If this was what she'd be like on her wedding night, then she'd gladly forgo marriage.

"I see something." a staticky voice announced over the com. "Actually, make that a lot of somethings. Jesus fuck Sarge, you getting this?"

"Indeed, you pussy. Stop sounding so damn scared and tell me what they're doing."

"Sir, they look like they're... shambling."

"God fucking damnit. Okay boys, the second anything, and I mean ANYTHING comes into view, you open fire right away." Sarge announced.

Trop blanched at the news. "LT? What's up?" Rose asked as she noticed the man move from relaxed to freaking out.

"Those aren't bandits, private." he whispered before gulping. "They're sporeheads. Fucking sporeheads. It wasn't a gas attack that killed these guys, it was a fungal agent."

"Fungal... Shit." Rose shouted, abandoning her lookout. Her pack, her pack, where was her fucking pack?

"What the hell do you think you're doing, private?" Trop asked as he frantically tried to align the launcher at extreme range.

"Gas masks, sir. I always pack two of them."

"Get back to your post! The fungus just needs skin contact to work. Your gas mask won't do shit."

"Can't hurt sir. Ah! Finally." She said, tossing her spare to the LT. "Heads up."

The dull thud of one of the launchers opening up could be heard. Rose just ignored it for now and frantically pulled her mask over her head. "Get your ass in gear Snow!" Trop shouted, having finally lost his temper. "If those fucks overrun us, it's game fucking over for the whole base. Do you understand?" She gave a thumbs up to show she'd heard him. "Then get to it already!"

She shimmied over to her spot, unclipping the scope from her rifle and aiming at the mist. The thudding doubled, then trebled as more sporeheads came into view on the other sections.

Figures started to coalesce in the rainy mist, their slow and hesitant gait belying the deadly cargo they carried. It wasn't just humans either; she could see large figures advancing between the shambling humans. Cordycepian agents didn't care what shape you came in. If your brain was big enough, it'd take it over.

"Sir," She said over the mask's CommLan. "You take care of the larger targets. Leave the human sporeheads to me."

"Got that, private. Now start fucking shooting before I throw you out into that moat."

"Yessir." She acknowledged, her rifle's shots echoing through the nest as the LT lined up a horse-shaped shadow in the mist.

The spotlight passed over the advancing human figures as the launcher prepared to fire. There wasn't really much that was left of the fungus's human hosts. The flesh had been eaten up from the inside out, leaving whatever skin had stuck to its frame the violent purple of recently dead tissue. The rest of the husk was covered in greyish moss, whatever defining characteristics that had been possessed by the infected probably still in the process of being devoured. The limbs' extremities were the worst affected with the hands being covered by a glove of white scales. It looked more like the husks were using tentacles instead of arms and legs now. And all that in three days. Rose would rather shoot herself than fall victim to that.

Trop's launcher opened up, the grenade splattering its target across the blasted landscape. Rose didn't care, lining up her sights on target after target. No matter how many she killed, though, she could see that the things were gaining ground despite the onslaught.

Then, all of a sudden, the mechanical noise increased. Rose's breath caught as she saw a new shadow coming over the hill in the distance. There was no mistaking what that fucker was. "TANK! There's a fucking tank out there!" She shouted.

The LT saw it too and immediately stopped firing. "Private, keep firing! AP grenades won't kill that fucking thing, but your bullets should be enough for anything else."

She obliged him, starting to open up on everything she could see that didn't have the angular shape of a Wartime monster. Where the hell had these guys found one of those?

The mist started to lift, allowing Rose to increase her range and finally see what she'd been shooting at without the spotlight. "The horses..." A voice whispered in horror. It was probably hers, but she wasn't sure. She fired at them, their dessicated bodies covered in a silver sheen making them easier to target than the other figures. Still, to see that they now had stalks instead of eyeballs and a black tongue dripping fluids as they advanced made her feel somewhat justified in her reaction.

The tank drifted out of the mist, seemingly gliding along as it moved into firing position. It ran over the infected on the way, their crunches sending sickening echoes around the base. Then, it stopped. A massive BOOM was heard.

"Shit! Abhorsen and Langmarsh are down! I repeat, we have people down here! What the-ah! BOOM"

Rose winced. That had been Scunner on the comms. Meant that Jeunesse had probably bought it too. "LT, any time now."

"Almost there private. Give me a minute."

BOOM. "We don't have a minute!"

"Right and-hah!" He shouted as the launcher readjusted itself. "Let's rock!" Jeez, one slightly pressured situation was all it took for rookie officers to drop their balls and lower their voice by an octave or two? Wonder why Sarge had such a hard time of it.

Rather than the dull thud given off by an AP round, the AT grenade gave off a Thud-WOOSH as its gyrojet system engaged. Trop sent the entire magazine down-range, the AT grenades hitting the tank in a steady staccato of explosions that seemed to feed off of each other. Everything else went silent as the fiery contrails sped across the open ground, the ultra-hot exhausts given off by the grenades enough to set one of the sporehorses on fire as it passed through the wake of the shell. The smoke from the explosions and subsequent fire ended up masking the vehicle.

"Yeah!" the LT yelled as Rose desperately tried to clear her ears. "Take that you motherfucker!"

The survivors on the line gave off a weak cheer as the stumbling firgures started to catch fire from the embers of their dying peers. Rose, meanwhile, struggled to reload the launcher as Trop checked the launcher for any damage inflicted by misfiring micro-rockets. "Hey el-tee, a little help over here!"

Trop sighed as he ran a hand over the outside of the launcher. "Can it private. Looks like we've got some deformation in the barrel lining. Grab the replacement, will you?"

"But we don't have any replacements here sir." Rose did not like this. There were two launchers on the line, one of which had doubtlessly been targeted by the tank in its first few shots. If this one was dead while the tank wasn't... "Sir, permission to speak freely sir?"

Trop's face was decidedly grim. "Go ahead."

"We can't stay in the dugout sir. You knocked that tank out good, but I'm not sure if it's a clean kill. It's one of the ones from before the Dark Days, see? Those things got nuked and still kept going after their crews were dead. So one rocket salvo? Not gonna do it. So we need to take this thing out before it starts up again and pastes the fuck out of us."

"Right. So what do you plan on doing about it private?"

Rose sighed. "Get the sarge on the horn sir. Someone needs to go out there and blow the shit out of this thing before the sucker's computers reboot. Sir."

Trop smiled at her. "Well summarised private. I'll just contact Hawthorne then."

Rose felt a shiver of unease crawl up her spine. Something was definitely not right. Her gut never lied.

The initial assault had failed. Whatever had caused those sporeheads to attack had not lasted long after the LT's time to shine. The rain seemed to have helped in that regard; normally, cordyceps victims would swarm in their hundreds, but only when it was dry and sunny. Made Rose wonder about where, exactly, the sporeheads took shelter. And just how those mythical bandits had coerced them into attacking their position in the first place. If the bandits hadn't all been caught by the infestation. Focus, Rose.

The one bit of bad news of the day was that Sarge had decided that Snow's call was a good one. More exactly, he'd told her that, quote, 'it was nice to know that that small rack of yours comes with some brains, private', unquote. And that, since the idea was Rose's in the first place, that she had volunteered to go blow up that 'stonking big piece of crap parked right in the middle of my fucking killbox'. So there she was, under the watchful eye of the whole outpost, loaded down with five kilos of solid-state explosive rope going off to silence the damn tank once and for all. She tightened her grip on her rifle. She'd come up with the idea. She shouldn't be the one that had to go out and pull it off. Life wasn't fair, ever.

She jumped out of the closest dugout, her eyes following the spotlight as she evaluated the terrain one last time. Dead sporeheads, check. Unexploded AP rounds, check. Fucking suspicious, probably sporeladen ground, check. Twitching corpses, thankful uncheck. Tank making slight grinding noises, check. She exhaled a slow breath as she targeted the corpses on the ground. She'd heard the stories about cordyceps victims before. Both father and grandfather had been adamant that, even if they look dead, they're probably just lying in wait. Coro had said something about them reminding him of a pini-ata, whatever the hell that was. She'd never really asked, writing it up to just yet another weird reference she could look up at her leisure later one. Still, she decided not to take chances.

Her rifle barked as she shot the closest corpse in the head. The corpse promptly inflated like a balloon before blowing up, releasing a spray of ooze that would have covered her if she'd been at close range. Eww. She now officially didn't want to know what a pini-ata was.

She repeated the process as she warily made her way to the deceptively still hulk, the spotlight helpfully illuminating anything within a dozen metres of her position. Eventually, she'd carved out an oozy path to the tank.

"Sarge, reporting that I'm at the tank and ready to lay out the charges sir. Need advice as to where and how to place them."

"Good work, private. Set them on either side of its treads."

Rose took a good look at the hulk she was eyeing from a metre away. "Beg your pardon sir, but I'm sorry to report that there are no, I repeat, no treads on this here machine sir."

The static on the end of the line seemed to grow louder as the silence continued. "Repeat that, private."

"No visible treads sir. Looks like this thing's a glider or, at least, one of those with the wheels inside the armour sir.."

"Sweet mother of crap." Sarge breathed into the line. "Alright private, next best thing you can do is stuff the lot down the gun barrel.

Stuff the what? Down the what? "Uh, you sure Sarge?"

"Princess, if you question me like that again, I'm gutting you, do you understand?"

"Yessir." Yeesh. That couldn't have come out fast enough.

"Now do as I say; go over to the tank's gun barrel and stuff the explosives down the fucking thing. You got that private?"

"Sir, yes sir. Moving now sir."

She shimmied over to the front of the monstrosity, trying very hard not to listen to the increased groaning noises coming from inside the tank. She uncoiled the explosive rope and quickly dashed up to the barrel of the tank. She started shoving in the whole lot before the distinctive whine of an activating point defence pod came online. No. She was half done. She couldn't just let two kilos of explosive dangle outside the barrel. It'd likely kill her along with the tank if she did. Cursing as the whine grew louder, she stuffed the rest of the rope into the barrel and used her rifle to push it all further in. That done, she started to run.

Too late.

The point defence pod suddenly activated with a sizzle-CRACK. She fell forward, screaming as her left shoulder burned. Getting up, she sprinted back to the line, zig-zagging as best she could to avoid more of the crimson bolts heading her way. Finally, she made it to the trenches, dropping into the hole just as another bolt hit the far side of the moat.

The tank, in the meantime, had finished groaning and started revving whatever it had for engines right up until Trop squeezed the detonator. A muffled Boom could be heard as its main gun disintegrated, taking the front of the behemoth with it. There was absolute silence from the compound until Rose's pained voice came back on the ComLan.

"Fuck, ah fuck. Sir, request-requesting a medic here." She panted out as she checked her shoulder. "The bastard shot me clean through."

"Stow it Snow. There's no way I'm sending Dubois to get your sorry ass. Make like a bitch and crawl back if you have to."

"Aw, love you too Sarge."

"Just shut the fuck up and get back here."

"Rose."

"Liz."

"What're you in hospital for?"

"Tank. You?"

"Sporeheads."

"Fuck. Got bit?"

"Nah, one of 'em was carrying a grenade. Blew my leg off. You?"

"Laser nailed my shoulder."

"Sucks."

"Yeah."

"Fancy a game of bones?"

"More inclined to play a game of thrones, actually."

"Huh. Got the cards for it?"

"Sure."

"And that was my first week of frontline duty." Rose said, happily chewing a bacon sandwich as she tossed back her coffee. And just where had these barbarians found coffee? That stuff was rarer than Shadowhawk teeth.

Hermione and the entire Gryffindor table stared at the girl sitting with them.

"So." Dean Thomas asked, clearing his throat. "You're telling me that, in your first week as a soldier, you fought zombies and destroyed a sapient tank?"

"Yes, what? That was nothing. I've seen and done worse since."

"...You know, I think I like you." One of the other kids said.

Rose just stared at them for a second. "Thanks. I tend to have that effect on people."

A/N: And there you have it. If you want to drop some ideas, post omakes or just make fools of yourselves on the internet (go ahead, no-one's judging you), just review and tell me please. Oh, and have fun, don't do anything that'll get you killed and - DO THE HARLEM SHAKE! WOOOP WOOOP WOOOP-etc.