Chapter 7

"You have had combat training before, right?" Brawl seemed set on training her and every excuse she could think of or had made up, he had brushed off as unimportant or "could wait till later".

But the way he looked at her, told her to be grateful if she could even walk later. It was truly unnerving.

"Yeah, I do know how to handle a gun" she put one hand on her hip and used the other to shield her eyes from the sun. It seemed like anything involving Brawl had to take place outside, in order to save equipment and other important stuff from being smashed into pieces.

"Weapon of choice?"

"Gun or shotgun."

"Really? Not anything more…effective?"

"As I said, I'm in the support; I have people to shoot for me, and last I checked a shotgun was an okay weapon" She teased. Brawl tilted his head mockingly. "Is that so?"

He looked to the side and Marie followed his line of sight. At the other end of the base was a small red flag. Somehow that seemed to make Marie nervous. He wasn't actually going to…was he?

"There are human weapons scattered around, all right for the taking, your goal is to touch the flag-"

"Just touch it?" She interrupted taking in her surroundings, looking for traps.

"Just touch it, not retrieve it or anything fancy, we will move onto that when you can get to it." He said smugly and Marie wanted to punch him in the face so bad but knew that she would only end up hurting herself.

"This is nowhere as easy as it sounds, right?" she asked wearily.

Brawl laughed loudly; did this guy have to be so loud all the time? "Why don't you go find out?" he said nearly kicking her out on the field.

Marie took a few cautious steps onto the field. Nothing seemed to happen. The flag was about 3 kilometer away, she could make a run for it but that would probably be stupid. She saw a pistol a few feet away and since nothing seemed to happen she slowly made her way to it.

"Hurry it up a bit, we don't have all day!" Brawl barked angrily clearly for the lack of entertainment. Marie jumped a bit, startled by his loud voice.

She looked to both sides and saw a cover about 100 meters ahead, standing up fully she jogged towards it. But as soon as she was halfway over there, an automatic machinegun shot up from the ground.

"Shit!" Hurling herself into cover she barely avoided the bullets, which would have made her looked like a holed cheese wheel. It wasn't a big cover and she had to keep her head low or else it would stick up over the edge.

But then again, if she hadn't kept her head low she might not have noticed the red dot moving over her chest. What the… red dot? Sniper-scope, shit!

She ran from the cover just as the sniper fired. And she could not hear anything over the ringing in her ears.

There was a trench just up ahead and she threw herself into it. But before she got into safety she felt a bullet strife the side of her leg. The wound hurt immensely and the fabric which had been protecting the sensitive flesh was completely gone, ripped away by the bullet.

Perking her head up to look for danger, she nearly got another bullet in between her eyes and decided it might be best to just sit there for a little while.

"What are you doing hiding in the trench, get moving already!" Brawl scolded.

"Um… I'm waiting for backup" she yelled back. Brawl shook his head disapproving.

"But Marie, you are so close!" She heard Swindle yell, since when did they just get and audience?!

Looking up she could see the top of the flag over the trench. Maybe there weren't that far, if she made a mad dash she might make it before getting holed with bullets.

"What are you thinking Marie, that'll never do" she muttered scolding herself. No, there had to be another way. Staying low she crawled along the trench, and despite the protest of her wounded leg she made it almost a kilometer over.

She could see the a drone holding a sniper rifle on a letch, he could see the entire field from up there, so there were no escaping his bullets, well unless in the trench where she was hiding at the moment.

But from here she had a perfect view on him.

She could see something glimmer a few feet away and crawled close. A rocket launcher? Well that was convenient. She still had a good view on the drone. But firing the weapon would blow her cover for sure. "No gut, no glory" she said to herself before loading the darn thing.

"I swear if you don't get out of that trench soon I will personally drag you out of it" Brawl warned, and no sooner were the rocket being fired, missing its target by a few meters, but still had enough impact to make the drone lose its balance and fall onto the machinegun underneath it.

Dust and smoke had covered the spot where Marie had been hiding and she used this to her advantage as she finally made a wild dash for the flag. Her wounded leg felt like it was on fire but she could endure the pain a little longer. Her right shoulder from where she had shouldered the rocket-launcher hurt so much and she knew that it would only be worse tomorrow. She clustered the gun in her right hand, refusing to look back as the smoke cleared. She was so close.

But nothing is ever easy, where would the fun and humiliation be in that?

Something kicked her in the side and the next moment she went flying. She thought she could hear a rib break as she tumbled to the ground, a weak scream leaving her small form. She held her chest in pain and dared to look up as something hot came up to her throat.

It was Merlot, he was holding a plasma sword and the tip of it rested at her throat, ready to gut her if she even thought about moving.

"That was… pathetic." Brawl stated seriously coming closer with Swindle right behind him. "You spend a lot of precious time hiding in the trench, the idea with the rocket launcher was good, always take out the snipers, they are always a pain. But making a run like that" He sighed deeply, like she was stupid. "You let your guard down and was unaware of your surroundings, it's like you didn't even hear the drone charge at you!"

Marie sat up carefully as Merlot backed off and the two cons came up to her. She taste blood in her mouth and wanted to cry, but she would be damned if she broke down like that in front of them. She hadn't heard Merlot; all she had concentrated on was getting to the stupid flag.

"If you had been paying better attention to your surroundings instead of just running from one cover to the other you would have noticed the energy-shields lying around." Swindle said pointing to one of the many strange looking wrists-devises.

Oh so that as what it was! Couldn't they have told her that before she was on the field? The ringing in her ears had finally stopped and she couldn't stop herself from glaring at them. "How was I supposed to know what that was!? I have never used an energy-shield before and no, I didn't hear the drone, because funny enough, humans a sensitive to loud noises, gunfire included!" she sneered angrily, forcing herself to stand up.

Brawl looming in over her, responding to her own anger. "Well, you said that you had combat training!" He accused. Oh so he was blaming her for this? Now that was a bad teacher!

Swindle hurried in between them, when he saw that the human hadn't thought of backing down before Brawl 'accidently' stepped on her. "Now, now, why do we all take a break and we can go over the weapons and smart gadgets afterwards" he suggested merrily.

Brawl gave an angry growl before walking into the base again. Marie gave him a growl in return but Swindle shooed her off to the side, into the shadow where a few crate stood.

"You know, right now the simulation is at level 0, the beginner level." The con-man explained.

"Thanks, that makes me feel a whole lot better; I couldn't even get to the flag at the lowest level" She muttered sadly, sitting down on one of the crates.

"You're not focusing. What I am saying it that the automatic weapons only will pop up one at a time, you did notice that right?" Now where he was mentioning it, she had noticed but she hadn't thought about it.

"Yeah, but I didn't think about it. What about the drones there's no way I can take them on, I mean they are four times my size!" As she felt around her ribcage she could feel that none of her ribs had broken off, that in itself was a miracle, but she would have a serious large mark in a few hours.

"Well think of something! Isn't that what you are good at?" He asked handing her a bottle of water. She took it gratefully.

"Well excuse my brain for not thinking clearly with bullets flying around my ears like that!" she sneered, a small hiss left her as she poured some of the cold water over her wounded side and leg.

"When we go through the simulation we usually just run across, killing everything that stands in our way. Obviously you can't do that, duo to your… physical disadvantage…" Marie huffed, well that was also a way of pointing out how weak she was because she was human.

"What level are you on" She asked already regretting it.

Swindle hesitated for a moment. "Well I'm on level 94 out of 100, and I have been there for some time."

"Why?"

"Well, as it gets harder you will get a permanent shield but if you take to many bullets the shield will drop, leaving you right open, at my level there are seven of these really fast machineguns and I never make it halfway across the field. They all activate the moment I step onto the field, there are no covers and all I have is a lousy sniper rifle." He sounded really angry and Marie got the hint not to push it.

He clearly had been stuck on that level for quite some time.

"Think of something…" she muttered to herself as she eyed the field, the simulation was still active and she could see how it spread out. It had a lot of covers, nine in total not including the trench which was very small but filled a fair part of the field. She figured that Merlot had been hiding behind one of the covers on the last kilometer, there were three on each of them, the trench in the middle of the second kilometer.

They were only using a small part of the field, she guessed that the gestalt usually used all 18 kilometers of the field and took the training away from the base when it was to be really hard.

It didn't get any easier when Brawl came back, they went over the weapons real quick and Swindle showed her how to operate the shield. By noon she was still unable to reach the flag and Brawl called lunch-break.

Marie was very quiet as they ate with the others, killing her chicken sandwich slowly with her fork. She was angry and ashamed at how poorly she had performed and the way her entire body arched and hurt didn't help. She was covered in cuts, blue marks and small wounds. Nothing too serious, being at the beginner level the simulation couldn't kill her.

But of course, as all the others left her alone with her failure, Vortex just had to start picking on her.

"SO I can guess that you didn't do too well with the simulator" He cooed. Marie stayed silent, set on not taking the bait. Onslaught shot him an angry look, telling him to keep his mouth shut. Of course he didn't listen to that.

"But don't be sad, it was expected. You are only human." As he said that Marie felt the anger burn inside her and brought her fork down a bit too forceful, making a hole in her plate. Blast Off looked down at her and if he could he would have raised an eyebrow. The redhead exhaled slowly. "Shut up Vortex, I'm not stupid enough to pick a fight with you" she said chuckling a bit, before picking her sandwich up with her hands and eating it.

The 'copter looked a bit offended but didn't sound angry as he taunted. "What? Afraid you're going to lose?"

Onslaught sighed at them but it didn't seem to be out of control so he didn't interfere. Swindle was tense, Vortex was unpredictable and it was a rare sight to see the two talking without Vortex threatening to kill her. In a way he was but this was different, calmer and more controlled.

"Lose? To you? In your dreams!" she said refusing to look at him. He could kick her ass without even breaking a sweat and they all knew it, but hell, she wasn't about to admit it.

"Now, if I was stupid I would come with a snide remark to that but I'm not." The interrogator said finishing his energon. "Wow, that's a first, want a medal?" Marie asked feigning surprised.

"Didn't you just say that you weren't going to pick a fight?"

"It slipped."

"I believe that's enough for today you two, I still value having an operative base" Onslaught said, ending the conversation before it escalated.

Brawl stood up. "Meet me by the simulator in a breem." He said focusing on Marie who groaned tiredly. "You know if I didn't know any better, I would say that you were trying to kill me." She said finishing her sandwich and standing up, her body protesting angrily at the command.

"You'll thank me for this later" He laughed leaving the room.

The human huffed in response but soon groaned in pain at the small movement. "Yeah, if I survive that long." She said trailing in behind him.