Hey, guys. As it is mentioned in the description, I was bored, so I made this. Do not expect regular uploads, I am still in the Ukrainian army. And yes, this is a godforsaken self-insert. Deal with it, there ain't that many from pencil-pushers with machineguns.
Expect the usual army bullshitery, as well as an occasional banter story.
There will be graphic content, so be prepared.
And yes, I am Ukrainian and I speak English with a British accent. Yanks adore me because of it.
The day just wasn't great.
To be fair, most days weren't great when you were so close to the front lines, mostly due to the shelling going both ways, but today was way worse.
You see, most days Vlad, otherwise known as "Britishman" or simply "Brit" to his friends, would be printing, sorting and filing the documentation of his battalion, along with three other junior sergeants, holed up in the basement of the building their temporary HQ was set up. Even when the battalion is actively engaging in combat, this is important, maybe even more so, since any and all soldiers would later be credited based on these very documents. Monthly pay, paperwork for wounded and killed, future awards and promotions – it all would later cite whatever they'd create and file now, so it was important not to half-arse these here and now.
That said, he was still stuck behind a screen at a desk down in a basement with an occasional explosion rocking somewhere in the town above, while the boys from the companies were fighting in the streets of Bakhmut. Sometimes it made him feel like a dick. But then again, he didn't ask for it – he did what was ordered, and someone had to do this job anyway, so better it be done by someone semi-competent.
The reason this day was worse than the others was due to the fact that they were moving. Last night two or three shells landed a tad too close to their HQ, which could mean the Russians figured out where they were and were now targeting them specifically. They might not, but the command decided they were better off safe than sorry and ordered a relocation the following early morning – this morning. Which now meant they had to get all their work equipment packed up and shoved into a van, then try to cram their kit in there as well, get to the new location, unpack and set it all up again. Nothing like hauling a buttload of gear and papers for the first half of the day…
They had little to no sleep the previous night, as they had to write the papers up for the relocation (yes, nothing in the army happens unless it's on paper), then pack, then sweep the area for anything they forgot. Now, finally, they were off.
Vlad dozed off to sleep as he sat on the passenger seat of the van, his combat gear on and his trusty AKS-74 stood on the floor in between his legs. After all, they were only fifteen kilometres away from the fighting. Of course, he and his belongings couldn't fit on their van, so he was forced to hitch a ride with one of the heavy support company's SUVs, driven by a soldier he could hardly recognise. The back of the truck was also now filled to the roof with assorted bags, kit and all.
However, as it later turned out, he was not destined to arrive to his planned destination. One could say it was Fate, others – mere chance and misfortune, but the result was the same.
The place where his car was in the column was suddenly engulfed in fire and dust, explosion sending shrapnel in all directions and shattering nearby windows. No one in the column heard the shell coming, but that was not unusual – you don't hear the one that's going straight at you.
In the aftermath, one more vehicle was damaged from the blast, and the car Vlad was in effectively seized to exist – the search party only found various metal fragments that might have been parts of it around the resulting crater. Whatever hit them, it was something big, 152mm, or even 203mm. He was later listed as missing in action, as well as his driver, since their bodies were never found.
Vlad woke up in his seat with a gruelling headache. Last thing he could remember was snoozing in the passenger seat and then a deafening crashing sound and bright light hitting him. In his book the headache was a good thing, all things considered. If he could feel pain – he was still alive.
Upon opening his eyes and looking around, he found that he was, unsurprisingly, still in the passenger seat of the car. That being said, the car was now somewhat of a wreck, the windscreen shattered and the frame all bent and misshapen.
"Hey, Tur, are you…" he turned to the driver, starting his question. What he saw then silenced him.
The driver's head rested on his left shoulder, bent at the neck in a clearly unnatural angle. Necks were not supposed to bend this way.
"Tur?.." Vlad asked quieter. His heart sank at the lack of a response. "F-fuck. Fuck arse. Just what I needed this morning."
He reached for the exposed neck of the driver just to make sure, but to little surprise, found that he was indeed dead.
"Fuck" he repeated, fumbling with the side door. Once he managed to pry it open, he climbed out to be surprised once again. Instead of apartment blocks and asphalt roads of the town they were driving through, the vehicle was surrounded by a forest – and almost unnaturally bright green one. It wasn't even a fir or pine tree forest which were common in the area of operation, the trees had leaves here.
Already shocked enough from the previous events, he didn't even freak out. Well, at least he didn't appear to be doing so on the outside.
"I'm not being paid nearly enough for this shit…" he mumbled, reaching into his pocket and fishing out a pack of cigarettes, taking one out and lighting it with his Zippo. He then pulled out his phone and checked the signal. There was none. "Fan-fucking-tastic. What now?" he asked into the distance, as if waiting for a response.
And funnily enough, there was one, in the form of distant gunfire. Vlad cursed yet again in Ukrainian, took his rifle off safety, chambered a round and put the safety back on. Riding through a town held by friendly forces, even in the vicinity of the front lines, was one thing. Being stranded who knows where with audible small arms fire not too far away was another.
The gunfire held for another twenty or so seconds and died off. Vlad waited for another ten, but nothing else seemed to happen. He sighed and turned back to the vehicle.
It was a wreck alright. The entire front was disfigured and he could see some liquid leaking from the engine block. There was little hope it would start again.
He opened the driver side door and clumsily dragged the body of the driver outside, laying him on his back some three metres away from the car. His head bobbed left and right as his body was being moved, no longer supported by the broken neck bone. Vlad then searched him for any ammo and documents, putting his findings in the day sack he snatched from the back of the vehicle. Tur's phone also showed no signal, and given that neither of them had a radio, that meant he had no way to contact any of his mates. Not that it looked like any of them would be around wherever it was he found himself at.
He found the standard loadout – three mags of regular ball ammo, one more fixed to Tur's short AKSU, but also one F-1 frag grenade, which he quickly put in one of the empty pouches on his webbing. His military ID went in the day sack, later to be handed to HQ, if Vlad ever managed to make it back.
By this time his mind has cleared enough to assess the situation. He quickly figured out that whatever happened to him was not natural, and he was no longer where he supposed to be. Could even be a different world for all he knew. He's read many a story in his life, including those that mentioned travel between worlds, and this sure as hell looked similar. Why the heck not? It was as good a guess as any. After all, according to physics, there might be an infinite number of realities. He was just grateful that whatever happened to him did not also turn him into a pickle or something. That would be awkward.
As for Tur's death, Vlad wasn't really sure what he felt. He hardly knew the guy, but it was still sad to see him go like this. That and he also felt lost with just himself and no idea what to do.
Another series of shots sounded off, this time louder and from a different direction. This one sounded like a shotgun rather than an assault rifle though.
The thick hedges to the other side of the car shook, alerting the soldier. Already on edge, he shouldered his rifle, but kept it pointing slightly below, just in case.
He was not prepared for what emerged out of them, though. A bipedal beast, covered in black fir, somewhat resembling a wolf stumbled into the opening, quickly noticing him, snarling and baring its teeth.
As the beast started approaching Vlad, thoughts raced through his mind at the speed of sound. But, seeing that the approach was far from looking friendly, one of those thoughts beat all the others to submission with a cartoony wooden mallet and forced the young soldier to act. The thought was "shoot first, ask questions later".
And shoot he did. The first three-round burst hit the creature centre-mass, sending it staggering to the ground while whimpering much alike to a dog, and two more bursts followed – one just grazing an upper limb, and the other luckily hitting the head, silencing the beast for good.
"Fffuck" Vlad let out, his breath elevated from stress. "That's a different world alright. Back home we don't have shit like that". He then slowly came closer to the downed body, shooting it in the head again for good measure, and examined it more closely. It looked like some kind of black werewolf, or at least how those were portrayed in the movies and videogames. Come to think of it, it behaved kind of like one as well. It was also starting to leak some kind of black smoke, which dissipated in the air surprisingly quickly, and as the smoke erupted, black flesh slowly disappeared into nonexistence.
"Now that is weird as hell" the soldier mouther off, kicking the body slightly.
"Nasty buggers, ain't they?" a feminine voice spoke from behind.
Vlad quickly turned around, lowering his stance and raising his AK. The sound of his shots affected his hearing somewhat, and apparently someone managed to sneak up on him without him noticing.
"Woah there, easy, soldier boy!" a blonde girl spoke, raising her arms. She spoke English, he noticed. Good thing he did too, after all, he did study in United Kingdom for five years, hence why his fellow soldiers called him Brit.
The girl looked around eighteen, with long bushy hair, unusually purple eyes and a somewhat frivolous civilian clothes. She also had some yellow bracelets on both arms.
Vlad lowered his weapon. Whoever she was, it was clear that she was not intending to hurt him. Had she wanted to, she already would have.
"You ok?" she asked.
"Yeah, I'm ok." he replied, standing straight again. It was a lie. He was fine physically, but with what was happening around him he felt anything but ok.
"Sooo… I guess you haven't met your partner yet?" the girl asked yet again in a cheery voice.
"Come again?"
"Your partner, the first person you come into eye contact with after landing. What, were you not listening when Ozpin explained it on the cliff?"
Her explanation did not explain anything at all. If anything, it created more questions.
"Sorry, I have no idea what you're talking about. Could you please tell me where we are?"
The girl looked at him uncertainly.
"Emerald forest, duh. By the Beacon Academy." Seeing no further understanding on his face, she pinched the base of her nose and sighed. "You're not a student going through initiation, are you?"
Vlad shook his head.
"Gods, I should have known it, no wonder I did not recognise you from last night. Just my luck... Name's Yang" she walked up to him, offering a hand to shake.
"I'm Vlad" the soldier replied, returning the handshake.
"Alright, Vlad, we need to get you out of here until…"
The noise in the bushes interrupted her, with three more beasts like the one before charging out and at the pair.
Vlad was quick to raise his rifle and let loose with what ammo he still had in the magazine. He still shot in short bursts in quick succession, but those were poorly aimed due to the suddenness of the situation, as well as the nature of the quickly approaching targets. He managed to down one of them and wound another when his rifle fell silent, with the beasts just five metres away.
To his surprise, the very civilian looking girl instead of screaming in fear and running away instead charged back AT the beasts. Just as he ran out, she reached the still intact canine, dodged it's slashing claw and punched. He noticed that she now had some sort of gauntlets on her hands, and as the punch connected, the gauntlet exploded forward with what looked like a shotgun blast, tearing the shoulder it struck apart from the body, momentum turning the beast around. She followed with a well-practiced uppercut, which was also complimented by a shot, turning most of the creature's head into a black mist.
As he dropped the empty mag and was struggling to get the fresh one in, the injured beast came upon him and was about to carve him in two, yet another shot from the blonde hit it in the back, making it miss. Moments later she finished it off with yet another explosive punch to the side of the head.
"…until more Grimm show up." she finished the sentence as if nothing out of the ordinary happened.
"You just had to jinx it, hadn't you?" despite just having been through a life-or-death situation, Vlad could not help to keep his smartass comment to himself.
"Oh, come on, like it was my fault!" she threw her hands in the air, yet smiling, happy that the man was unhurt.
"Sure, whatever. So, these fuckers are called Grimm, are they?" he asked, after finishing his reload and picking up the empty mag to put back in his pouch. "And how the heck did you do all that?"
"Did what? Be a badass, huh? That's huntress training for ya." She cocked her eye at him. "But seriously, you didn't know what Grimm are? Have you been living under a rock or something?"
"For the last two weeks – pretty much." The concrete of the basement where their HQ was in those two past weeks counted as rock as far as he was concerned.
"You are messing with me, aren't you?" her voice became annoyed.
"A bit." He chuckled. "But yes, I have no idea what those thing are."
"How?"
"Never seen anything like it before."
"Seriously, how did you get here and where from?" she asked, more confused than anything.
"Does the name 'Ukraine' ring a bell with you?" The look on her face said it all. "Ok, it might sound crazy but it looks to me I'm in a completely different world. As to how, be damned if I know."
The silence between them was only interrupted by a burst of automatic fire in the distance.
"You're crazy, aren't you?" the girl asked.
"I have a certificate that says otherwise."
"Yeah, and Beowulfs nest and lay eggs." She obviously wasn't buying it.
"Look, I've had to load a truck full of kit this morning, then something big exploded near it and next thing I see it I'm in the middle of a fucking forest, my driver's dead and the place is crawling with fucking werewolves on speeds, what the fuck am I supposed to tell you?!" he exploded.
"Whoah, easy there" she raised her hands apologetically. "You mean you actually don't know where and how you got here? Also, what was that about the driver?"
"Yeah, I mean it. As for Tur, he's behind the vehicle" Vlad gestured with his hand.
She peaked there and spotted the body.
"Shhit" she hissed. The situation got from just weird to bad weird. She could tell the guy was dead from one look at his head.
"Ok, fine, whatever. We need to get you out of here before any more show up, and then you can bullshit somebody else, I don't care."
"And him?" he asked, eyeing the body of his driver.
"They'll send a search party to retrieve the body later, I guess. Let's go now."
"Where to?"
Where indeed? She knew she had to get this guy out, for all his crazy stories, but she hadn't yet thought of how. Then again, all the students were told to go to the ruins of the temple and then carry on back to Beacon. Beacon was also the closest safe place she could get him to, and when she meets her future partner and more students, that's more hunstsmen and huntresses to stand between Grimm and this civilian, right? Sure, he didn't look like a civilian with all his gear, but neither he looked like a huntsman. Both him and his dead friend wore the same, if only slightly different outfits, which were coloured in pixelated green of different shades. It looked weird and blended in with the foliage, which is why she didn't spot the body at first. Maybe they were from some sort of militia? Or a mercenary group? She couldn't tell, nor did she want to think too hard about it. She was a down-to-earth girl, who preferred to solve problems with punches and leave the thinking and planning to others.
"Alright, I was originally headed towards those ruins up north. That's where the other students are headed too. We go there, we meet up and we get you to Beacon so the authorities can handle you. Sound good?"
"Not like I have any other plans. Gimme a moment." He went on to the car to grab the driver's AKSU, chambered the round and slung it on his back. "Good to go."
Back on the cliff with the launch pads, the headmaster and deputy head of Beacon sat at a foldable garden table, sipping coffee and tea respectively while monitoring the students' performance through their scrolls, connected to a network of cameras installed in the training grounds.
"Ozpin?" the blonde woman voiced.
"Yes, Glynda?" the gray-haired headmaster replied, putting his mug down on the table.
"We have an …unexpected situation."
"Being?"
"An unknown civilian vehicle showed up out of nowhere, with two people in it. A student, miss Yang Xiao-Long has encountered them."
"Oh?"
"One of them appears to be dead. The other just gunned down another Beowulf."
"Are they in danger right now?"
"Not at the moment. It appears they are headed towards the objective."
"Hmm…" the man took another long swig of his brew.
"Ozpin?"
"Let them be. It looks to me that young miss Xiao-Long decided to escort him back to safety, and it wouldn't do to interrupt the initiation without an utmost need."
Glynda looked annoyed at that.
"What about the civilian?"
"Didn't you say he just killed multiple Beowulfs? He sounds like he could handle himself just fine. Besides, it is going to be just a short trek through the woods."
"The Grimm-infested woods" Glynda reminded him in a stern voice.
"And he'll have a number of huntsmen and huntresses in training escorting him. It can't be that bad, surely."
"Whatever…" the deputy sighed. She knew this was going to come back to bite her in the arse later, somehow. But right now she had nothing to counter with. "I'll have a Bullhead on alert just in case."
The newly met duo were on their way through the woods, thankfully with no further Grimm encounters yet. Yang tried to run at her usual pace at first, but seeing that Vlad could hardly match it, with all his gear slowing him down was forced to slow down. They fell into a two-minute jog, then five-minute walk routine, which wasn't fast, but allowed for better situational awareness. At least that was what Vlad kept telling himself after recovering from that stupidly fast initial surge. He couldn't run for long with his plate carrier and ammo on, sue him! He was supposed to be pushing papers around, not run through werewolf-populated forest!
"So, what's with the gear and all?" the girls asked when they switched to walking again. "You part of a militia or something?"
"Territorial Guards, actually." He replied, lighting another fag. "But part of Ukrainian armed forces. As for the gear, well, war."
"There's a war back where you come from?"
"Yeah, and a big one. Fuckers thought they'd be done with us in three days. Been going on for over a year now."
"Damn. Did they not stop when the Grimm were attracted to it?"
"We don't have those there."
"Yeah, yeah, and you're from a different world, blah-di-blah. Seriously, I might have believed you had you just mentioned another world, but one with no Grimm? That shit's from fairy tales."
"And those furries we shot earlier are in our fairy tales. So what?"
"Urgh, fine. What's with that armour, though? It even looks heavy, and you don't seem to be a close combat type. Why bother with the weight when it only slows you down?"
"I like my insides not becoming outsides, thank you very much."
"Yeah, but Aura can still protect you until you break distance again."
"What's Aura?"
She really should not have been surprised. If this guy didn't even know about Grimm, why would he know about aura?
"You don't know about that too? Geez, they must be telling you nothing back there. It's the manifestation of one's soul, which protects you from harm, strengthens you and resonates with Dust."
"Wish we had that but we don't. Also, dust? The only thing in me to resonate with it is my sneezing reflex."
"Not that dust, Dust! With a capital D! The stuff that powers everything, including your weapons!"
He really was a tough one. How could he not know what was considered common knowledge even among children?
"Here, see this?" she handed him a fire slug round from her pouch. "There's Dust inside and the slug itself is infused with fire Dust. It creates fire when hitting the target. There's also ice, earth, gravity... Many kinds."
He took a close look at it, twisting it in his hand.
"Nope, we don't have that either."
He must be messing with her.
"Then how does your weapon work then, smartass?"
"Our cartridges have gunpowder in them, which is ignited by a primer, combusts and creates gas pressure on the bullet, forcing it out of the barrel."
"Gunpowder, huh? So, in other words, weapons grade Dust?" she asked with a cocky smile.
"No, smokeless gunpowder. Cellulose treated with concentrated nitric acid, ground down and with some additives to make it more effective." He said, remembering what he knew about the manufacturing process.
"Bless you."
"You haven't studied chemistry that well, have you?" Vlad asked knowingly, ditching the fag butt.
"I studied to learn how to punch faces inwards, not the nerdy stuff." Yang said proudly.
"Well, as they say, 'beware of the quiet kid'…"
"Your point?"
"You can punch faces. I can make a bomb to turn them into red mist."
Their little argument was interrupted by another wicked creature, a much larger this time. If those previous ones looked wolf-ish and were about six feet tall, this monster stood at about eight and then some. It also looked like a very pissed off bear standing on its hind legs. The bad news it was pissed off at them and made that message loud.
"Stay back, I'll deal with it!" Yang said, launching herself with the recoil of her gauntlets. What she forgot to account for was A: that she pointed them backwards; B: there was somebody standing behind; and C: this someone didn't have neither the reaction of a huntsman-in-training to dodge the shot nor the unlocked Aura to withstand it. To be fair, she was not really a team player – she rarely, if at all, had to check those sort of things, as it was normally either a one-on-one or "surrounded by enemies" for her. Still, one bit of buckshot found its way into the soldier's calf, grazing it, and the rest narrowly missing him.
And boy did he feel it. The rifle he brought up to line a shot up was quickly dropped to hang on the sling around his neck, and he collapsed down on his side. One look down showed the side of his leg torn and bleeding, and then his training kicked in. He reached for the torniquette fixed to his shoulder, rolled it out and tightened it around the top of his leg, as hard as he could.
Meanwhile, the shots in front, accompanied by loud growling of the beast, came to an abrupt end, the girl standing on top of the chest of the downed foe, its head pulverised into nonexistence.
"Now, that's how you…" Yang started her sentence with a victorious smile on her face, while turning back to him, but quickly fathomed that something was out of the ordinary. "Vlad, are you fine?" she called out.
"A-argh, do I look like I'm fucking fine?!" he shouted back angrily.
"What happened?" the look on her face changed to concerned, as she quickly made her way to him.
"You fucking shot me, you stupid twat, that's what happened!" he explained, while opening up his medkit and unwrapping a pack of bandages. "Awww, fuck!"
"I'm… I'm sorry I…"
"Watch your fucking backblast next time, now, will ya!" he said, applying pressure and wrapping the bandage around the leg.
All Yang could do was just watch. She was not trained in first aid, as even though Signal did have an optional course on it, she did not take it. Why would she? She was the heavy-hitting assault type, and at the time she couldn't imagine a scenario where she would have to apply those skills. She thought that in a combat situation her job was to eliminate the threat as fast as possible, lest there be no one alive left to deal with the consequences, and surely anyone fighting alongside her would have Aura to shrug off the initial hits. In hindsight, she probably should have taken that course, but hindsight is always 20-20.
Then a sudden thought came piercing through her mind.
It was against what was taught to them, and it would probably endanger him later in his life, but at least he would have one to live before that happened. Even with what looked like a flesh wound, he was not going to walk back to Beacon as he was, let alone run. But there was one way to fix him.
"Hey, dude, I'm sorry, but I need you to listen!" she told him in the most sure voice she could pull off right now.
"Fuck, what now?!" Vlad asked back angrily, popping the pills from the medkit and throwing those in his mouth.
"Look, you're not walking with this wound and I know a way to help!"
"Is it a medevac helicopter?!"
"A what?"
"And like that you've lost me!" He said, grinning through pain. "Damn, that sounded way cooler in my head. Shhhh…" he twitched from pain again.
A wolfish howl sounded off in the distance. Yang knew that sound, and it was not a good one. All the negative emotion must have attracted the Grimm – they needed to get out, and fast.
"Look, there's little time. I'm gonna unlock your Aura and hopefully it'll heal you enough for us to get out. You ok with it?"
"Fine, whatever, just do your thing and get me out of here!"
Yang took a deep breath in.
She'd never done this before herself, but she knew how it's supposed to be done. After all, her uncle unlocked her aura, and you could hardly forget that.
"For it is in passing that we achieve immortality. Through this, we become a paragon of virtue and glory to rise above all. Infinite in distance and unbound by death, I release your soul, and by my shoulder, protect thee."
Vlad's body shimmered with light. It was grassy green, much alike the colour of his uniform, and as it washed over him, his pain soothed, and his senses grew ever so sharper. He glanced over to his poorly bandaged leg and he could see – no, he could feel – the shallow wound closing in on itself, as well as a strange feeling of pure might in his muscles. He felt he could carry crates and crates of equipment all day and not get tired.
Another howl was heard by both of them, much closer this time. Thankfully, it only came from one general direction.
The duo glanced at each other.
"Can you shoot?" asked Yang.
"Think so." Vlad replied, getting onto one knee and readying his rifle.
Not three seconds later, the first shadowy figure burst out of the bushes, only to be met with a short burst of automatic fire. It stumbled, and met its end with a load of buckshot to the head.
Five more followed, but to no more success. The blonde closed in on the beasts, brawling her way through, while the soldier kept those not in a claws reach distracted with his AK. It took less than a minute for them to finish the Grimm off.
"Alright, looks like we're about done!" said Yang cheerily, turning to face the man.
A nearby tree tumbled down, pushed by a much larger wolf-looking abomination.
The Alpha, as Vlad would later learn, opened its upper limbs and howled at them direct, in an attempt to intimidate them.
It ate steel instead, as the soldier unloaded into its open maw, staggering the Grimm behind Yang's back. As it tried to retain balance, its feet got tangled up in some sort of black cord, apparently hidden in the undergrowth, and it stumbled down to the ground. Vlad was forced to reload at that point, but that did not stop him from seeing a human figure jumping on the beast's back and unloading what looked like a pistol into its forehead. The Grimm slumped, dying for good, the figure still standing on its quickly evaporating back.
Slowly, it turned, revealing to be another young female, dressed in black and with a rather peculiar bow on her head. She also had in her hands a weapon that Vlad could hardly comprehend, but what sounded like it shot pistol rounds.
She looked at them with her unnaturally yellow eyes and asked in a smooth, calm voice:
"Do you need any help?"
Vlad looked sideways to Yang.
Yang looked directly at the newcomer, and her eyes were on fire. Almost literally. There's no way a person's eyes can be on fire and still perfectly functional, right?
He chose to ignore the barely noticeable low whistle he definitely did not hear.
"Yeah, I guess we could use some." He said.