You'll tank me later.
Warning: Violence, fight scene, weapons, explosions, gore.
Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN HETALIA. I have fun manipulating their characters, though
"Anyone can give up, it's the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together when everyone else would understand if you fell apart, that's true strength."
—Alexander Pushkin
Burn
Ivan was trapped again. Except now he wasn't in handcuffs with legs enough to carry him away. He was in a case of steel and iron, which, depending on his luck, may just serve as his coffin.
There were two other men in the tank with him, and although they had space to spare, he couldn't feel more cramped. Five seconds tops, he thought. Five seconds, a quick jab to the throat, and I will be free again.
He went over the plan again and again in his mind, bracing himself against the walls of the tank as it rumbled over hill and rock.
"Team Beta," Red stated, eyes meeting his. "That's you and Francis. You will be responsible for taking back central D.C. and eliminating sentries and communication lines along the way."
"Just the two of us?" Francis breathed in disbelief.
Red fixed Francis with a withering glare. "As much as I wouldn't mind sending the red wookiee out there to deal with it by himself," her eyes trailed to Ivan for a moment before once again regarding Francis with exasperation, "I have put you both in charge of a group of one hundred trained Resisters, fifty for each of you to command."
"'Each'?" Francis parroted, aghast. "You mean to split us up?"
"D.C. is large," Red answered. "And we are few. We must spread ourselves thin in order to accomplish what we want, but there's a distinct difference between us and them." She placed her hands on the meeting room table, making the full ashtray that sat on it rattle, and leaned in. They could all smell her pungent tobacco breath. "They are mindless. We are not. They do only what they are told and nothing else. Whatever amount of cunning they had in them before being conditioned is gone. They won't hide or run, and they certainly won't be devising any elaborate plans to take you out—unless, of course, they are instructed to. Their brains are one with the Overlord, and they will not think for themselves unless they are told to do so—an individualized control that the Overlord will be unwilling to give up. Sure, there will be many, but there is a big difference between an army of free-thinking humans and an army of hive-programmed ants. And ants have always been easier to crush." She pulled back and clasped her hands behind her. "So, fifty for Francis and fifty for Ivan. Sufficient enough. And on top of that, I'll be sending Bernard with you. He'll be happy to take out the sentries for you with his group of snipers."
Ivan looked at her with a steady gaze. "Your squad is large to be commanded only by yourself, and there are still some left over to aid the other teams as well, da? How expansive is this Resistance?"
A smile pulled at her lips—smugness brought on by the fact that she knew more than Ivan did. "Large enough," was her simple reply before she pulled her eyes away from his to take in all of the occupants of the room. "As I've said before, there will be a monthly training drill at the Ellipse at eight. Francis and Ivan, you will be in the thick of it, but wait for Bernard to give the signal before you make your move."
"And what kind of signal would that be?" Ivan questioned, disliking how uninformed he was about this part of the impending battle.
"It won't be hard to miss," Red assured almost with an air of derision, her resentful look making it more than clear that she felt a certain note of revenge by keeping him in the dark. Whether that was for past enmities or Ivan's recent closeness to her father, he couldn't tell. He sensed it might be a bit of both. "And don't," she enunciated, "screw it up."
Ivan scoffed as he recalled the conversation, distracting himself from his nerves by picking at the hem of his pants. Trust Alfred not to raise any of his children with a heavy hand. He probably gave her whatever she wanted when she cried just to shut her up.
He imagined Alfred swaddling a squalling infant, flushed with exhaustion as he chased after his other states, shouting such things as "Hey! No hair-pulling!" and "Dirt is not food!" He could almost laugh, but then he realized how far away Alfred's ridiculous antics were, how easily they could be lost. Here he was, sitting in the belly of a tank heading for a routine drill that was anything but routine, a mile away from Alfred, while Alfred himself took on the most dangerous part of all they had planned. Ivan hadn't liked the team layouts from the start. They were organized, Red claimed, so that they were paired with the people who would cause them the least distraction. No one had liked it, but no one could deny the sense in it either. Then again, it was a distraction to not have Alfred here, to worry about him from afar. He didn't want Alfred to die because Ivan's life was in danger—but he also didn't want to make it out only to find him killed, having been unable, having been too far away, to comfort him as he passed. Stark was the image of a wounded Alfred, bleeding out somewhere, hidden from view and struggling for breath, slowly dying all the while frightened and alone. As agonizing as it would be for him to experience, Ivan wanted to be there holding Alfred's hand, letting him know that he wasn't alone, that he was loved, as the man left his suffering behind.
One of the men sniffed ahead of him, pulling Ivan out of his murky thoughts. He stared at the back of their heads, generically shaven, physiques so similar it appeared as if they had stepped out of the same mold. They were not as bulky as some of their comrades, their muscles honed specifically to be lean, designed to lift them up and out of small spaces quickly and efficiently. They had certainly given Ivan strange looks when he had come up to them, reporting that he had been assigned to man the tank with them. Ivan was tall and barrel-chested; not the prime choice for a tank. But the look in the men's eyes went blank as they tried to examine him further, incapable of suspecting what, for all intents and purposes, looked to be one of their own. They had been taught not to question. Ivan's eyes narrowed as he studied their necks, elongated and exemplified by the black turtlenecks that wrapped around them, so skinny and inviting to the fingers. Just another member of the hive, the nest, Ivan mused, flexing a leather-gloved hand. Ants indeed.
Ivan knew they were close when the ground started flattening out, most of the streets they had been utilizing for travel pockmarked with the kisses of shells and other such explosives. The hard crunching of broken asphalt was replaced with a gliding smoothness. Grass.
The Ellipse. President's Park South: a more than fifty acre long oval patch of grass that stretched up to the White House gates. It had once been so lovingly watered and cared for, a lush green even at the peak of summer. Now, browning and scraggly, covered here and there with snow that had managed to survive explosive drills, it crunched beneath the worn treads of an M1 Abram. It was hard to believe that such a dreary, desolate place, riddled with scorch marks and remnants of RPG blasts, was once host to an annual Easter egg roll and holiday home to a 28-foot-tall Christmas tree whose 60,000 LED lights could be seen for miles.
And all at once Ivan felt terribly homesick. If the world were still as it was, in a couple of weeks Red Square would be skirted with lights, turning the white snow into a kaleidoscope of color. Hundreds would pack themselves in like penguins, turning up their heads to regard the fireworks that were their own manufactured northern lights, popping in bright reds and greens and gold, illuminating the cathedral and the snow-dusted Christmas tree as they welcomed a new, promising year.
And then a week afterward… There would be Christmas and a meal with twelve courses…
His stomach growled a bit, but the men didn't look around. All he'd had since arriving at the bunker was soup (cabbage or gristle depending), bread, and oatmeal. He had done with far less, but his belly was conditioned to be particularly gluttonous around this time of year. And, hell, Ivan deserved it. He could kill for just one of those twelve courses. In a way, he would be. One less Organization soldier meant one step toward good food.
He could almost laugh at himself. I'm killing for food. It all came down to that in the end, the simple things. The world really has gone to hell.
But then again, he surmised, being homesick was worth nothing now. What was there to be homesick for if everything he had once known was gone? Homesick for society seemed a better phrase and the worst part was wondering if even that could be reestablished.
The tank spit as it shuddered to a halt, and Ivan was quickly shunted out of the scope of his petty, physical needs and into the wider, icy pool of the now. Every muscle in him wound tight as each minute they were still ticked by, the small space as quiet as death. No joking, no talking, not so much as a finger lifted until instructed. Ivan mimicked the men's silence and emptiness as best he could. A part of him wished his own mind could be so vacant instead of swarming with ominous doubts and fears.
He listened, the air so devoid of sound that he was sure he would go deaf just from hearing a whisper. Five minutes in, and he found himself subconsciously wringing his hands. He ceased immediately, eyes darting around. Their backs were to him; they couldn't see him…
Eight. Eight minutes in and nothing had happened. He had been counting dutifully the whole time. The drill hadn't even commenced. Everything was stationary, so much so that for one heart-stopping moment Ivan thought they had been found out, that they were the ones being ambushed. They knew he was in the tank. He couldn't count how many had seen him climb in. Those two men, with deceivingly still hands, were going to reach to their sides at the mere whisper of a command, any second now—
Ivan jumped at the sound of a distant gunshot, eyes darting to the thick, narrow windows that lined the front of the tank. A sea of black soldiers stood shoulder-to-shoulder before the tank outside, unmoving, stiff with duty. A few tense seconds passed, during which Ivan's heart threatened to squeeze out from between his ribs, and then—everything erupted.
Outside was mass chaos. Resistance forces had revealed themselves among Organization ranks, gunning down anyone who stood in their way while the opposition troops struggled to reorganize and make sense of what was happening. Ivan was incapacitated for a few seconds, mesmerized by the violence outside. It had started: the battle that would decide the fate of the world. He had never felt the weight of mortality rest so heavily upon his shoulders.
Then Ivan snapped out of his daze, legs pushing him forward before his mind could recall what he had to do. Hands found a black-clad neck before the man could so much as turn his head, squeezing, squeezing.
"Sonofabitch!" his comrade shouted, and Ivan could see his hands fumbling for his weapon. He squeezed harder. The man he was strangling gave a last hoarse wheeze, face and lips blue, blood vessels bursting in his eyes, and then he was slumping forward, a dead weight. By the time Ivan turned to deal with the remaining soldier, the man had slipped the gun out of its holster at his side. Ivan knocked it away with his hand before it could be aimed, sending it skidding across the floor of the tank and into a far corner. The soldier had just enough time to whimper before Ivan had him by the throat as well.
It was obvious that these men were inexperienced in combat; they were young (muscles still lean enough to slip easily in and out of tanks), possibly new recruits not yet wholly conditioned into a robotic mindset, still sporting that fearful spark in their eyes whenever Ivan's hands threatened them with death. And yet, as frightened as he was the soldier flailed, kicking out his legs and pulling at Ivan's arms in a desperate bid for breath. With every tug or writhe Ivan's hands slipped just a bit, sweaty with angst. He soon tired of the boy's struggles, heart lurching with every chink of lead bouncing off the tank armor, and he drove the soldier up against the wall of controls.
"Die!" Ivan hissed impatiently, anxiously, as the boy's eyes rolled like a horse's in distress, legs kicking just as hard. "Будь ты проклят! Die!"
The boy's eyes were wet with horror before they filled with blood. He threw his head back against the wall in a final pathetic attempt at survival only to lose his breath from the impact and render himself unable to take another. The soldier's body went boneless, melting beneath Ivan's hands as the warmth of life left him, but Ivan didn't let up in the slightest, securing that the boy did not return.
Finally, he convinced his strained appendages to release their grip, and he watched as the boy's head lolled to the side, eyes open wide in a last look of shock. Blood continued to well in the soldier's eyes, eventually sending a dark tear winding down a pale, bloodless cheek. Ivan leaned back on his hands, staring, chest heaving, fingers aching after their prolonged stranglehold.
He could have, Ivan realized, as he snapped to and scrambled to move the bodies into a stack at the back of the tank, shot the men to save time. But even if his brain had been operating at full capacity beforehand he doubted he would have done so. After everything the Organization had done Ivan needed the satisfaction of seeing their soldiers' fear as they died slowly by his hands and not impersonally by one of their own stolen weapons. As brainwashed as he knew them to be, he couldn't bring himself to feel any sympathy for them, not after all that had happened.
Ivan had just accessed the driver's seat when a considerable blast rumbled through the skeleton of the tank just outside and he knew he had to get moving. He crammed himself into the seat, hand wrapping around the steering handle as tightly as it had the soldiers' necks.
Ivan hoped he still knew how to operate a tank, it had been so long since he'd manned one (and certainly not alone. That was never allowed). You'll remember, he assured himself as he released the parking brake and shifted gears, no time for hesitation as more explosions and gunfire sounded around him, closer. He eased back the throttle.
Ivan had not liked the idea of being stuffed into a tank, trapped and as if in hiding while everyone else did all the dirty work. But he could not refute the necessity of it. As had been agreed, his job was to lead the Resistance forces assigned him to the Organization's Technical Headquarters, using the tank to shield his troops along the way. A mile he would have to go, all the way to the Archives where the HQ was based, but at least then he would be closer to Alfred. He used that as his motive as he twisted back the steering bar further, sending the tank from an apprehensive crawl into a steady roll.
It would be easier if he had an assistant, Ivan thought, as he struggled to peer into the periscope, continuing to operate the armored behemoth. Smoke curled and bullets, mere blurs, cut through the air. Every now and then there would be a flash of white and the reverberations of an explosion would rock the tank. He hoped his men were keeping up with him as he rounded a corner at which stood what was once the Department of Commerce, making his way down the crumbling road.
The dangerous sounds faded away for a time, and Ivan relaxed a bit. But he was only allotted five minutes of peace before Organization troops were rushing after him, and he could hear his own troops responding with gunfire.
Ivan wished more than ever that he had a clone, the gunner's seat positioned behind him and controls far out of reach. He could flatten the whole line of approaching Organization ranks, but he needed to keep guiding the tank or else risk having his men meet the opposing troops before they could fully execute their orders. He couldn't afford to lose anyone, but he knew by now that the possibility of no one having already died was especially slim.
At a conflicted crossroads, Ivan was startled by the sharp static flooding his eardrum, having completely forgotten in his adrenaline haze that he had an earpiece in, connecting him to the channel the Resistance was utilizing. A voice faded in, shouting.
"… ets are approaching," Bernard conveyed, shouting but firm. "Ivan, they have jets. They're honing in on the tank. Abort immediately. Copy?"
"Da," Ivan forced out as he practically punched the parking brake. He clawed his way up to the latch, squeezing awkwardly into the gunner's seat as he worked the hatch open. A quick glance at the cross-hairs dominating the gunner's view revealed dark silhouettes against the smoky sky, wings manifesting as they grew closer. His hands were steady, knew what to do more than his brain, which was currently trying to conceive all of the pain that would come with being blown up and slowly burning to death. "Aborting now." It sounded more like a question than a promise.
The resounding click of the latch switched his heart on; blood was rushing in his ears as he used all his strength to push open the heavy hatch, bracing his hands on the sides, lifting himself up and out like a seal emerging from an orca-guarded ice hole. He heard the growing roar of jet engines, felt as if he had a giant target painted on his back. He didn't dare waste time glancing around as he slid haphazardly down the sharply angled side of the M1 Abram, barely feeling the cuts and bruises he earned from his reckless haste. As soon as his feet hit the cratered asphalt, he set to running. "Disengage!" he shouted to the men still holding their ground behind him. "Shells, shells! Disengage!"
He felt like such a coward for being the first to run, so much so that his muscles locked up and refused to allow him to go any further until he saw to it that his men were well out of range. He beckoned to them with wide gesticulations of his arms, shouting his mantra of "Disengage!" and "Shells!"
The last man ran past him, slowing as he stared, reluctant to leave Ivan without guard. "Go!" Ivan insisted with a rough shove of his hands that nearly sent the young soldier stumbling as he went on his way. The Russian took the time to realize that all the Organization men that had pursued them had moved well out of the way, and he followed their gazes, their upturned faces, as they watched the jets soar close, noses now looming ominously above the tank. Ivan stared in a kind of shocked paralysis, seeing the hatch open on a polished belly. Only then did he have the sense to turn and follow his men.
But as soon as he took his first bounding step Ivan knew he would never get out of range in time, and nothing was around that would hinder the force of the impending explosion. Yet he kept going, eyes trained on the pillared building with its blown out windows and crumbling columns that were the remains of the Archives, that was Alfred. His legs felt numb as they moved on their own, and then everything went silent and white and hot. A massive wave of heat rolled over him with force enough to flay, laying him flat across the faded road and pinning him there as fire rapidly gnawed at his body from the legs up. He couldn't hear, everything was a shifting, dizzying blur, and then he couldn't feel his lower half. And then, like a great breath over a candle, everything just went out.
Translations:
Будь ты проклят!-Damn you!
A Word From the Writer: Wow, that was kind of abrupt. And he didn't even get to do anything cool... except, well, drive a tank. By the way, I have never been (nor will I ever be) inside a tank, so I googled a bunch of stuff on tanks and threw all that I could gather in here. Dunno if a M1 Abram actually looks like that on the inside. Throttles on tanks have since evolved from levers to a sort of handlebar... that's pretty much all I found out. So yeah... tanks. And Russia managed to get himself caught in an explosion in the first ten minutes of the battle. Ouch.
By the way, if anyone is confused Russia uses the Julian calendar, which means Christmas falls after New Year's (on January 7). And the fireworks light up Saint Basil's beautifully. I would like to see it in person, but me and cold don't mix. And that's why they invented television and the internet. Haha, I'm a hermit. -_-
The battle has finally begun! Phew, jeez and it's only been what, a year? All good things to come to those who wait~ (except this is a war and people may die). :D