The boys hummed as Vic loomed over his Scroll. The young vets read Ozpin's message again and again and wondered just what the hell it meant. 'A friend of the School has asked for you and your comrades, mister Toma. Says he needs a target destroyed. White Fang. Payment is forty thousand Lien'. Were they suddenly Ozpin's private Mercenary army? Honestly, it sure as shit felt that way. Vic shifted from one foot to the other uneasily, humming as he looked at the message, before asking, "Should we accept? It's still money..."
"Fucked if I know, man..." Paul answered, shifting his FAMAS over so he can better hold his LMG. The men all looked to each-other and Saila, the lattermost of which simply shrugged, unsure what she should say. Victor 'technically' outranked them all by presence in the combat areas of Post-Collapse Russia, after all. The others had come a few weeks to a few months after, including her own unit. Still, she listened in, eyeing Jim. The young man seemed to have a thought.
"I'd say we do it. Gotta stretch our legs and shit, right?" Jim then voiced said thought as he patted his XM5 and gently adjusted the Vortex scope for CQC. Vic had noticed the motion and nodded to him, then looked around and got several nods from his pals. Even Saila hefted her Sako rifle up with a grin, thumbing the safety of the AK-style weapon to 'off' with little hesitation to accentuate the point...
Then immediately thumbing it back on. Gun safety wasn't a joke.
"Alright, fuck it..." Vic sighed, then smirked as he typed up the affirmative response to Ozpin, adding with a short laugh, "Maybe we'll find Dushman already doing our job for us." before sending the message and going to don his kit. He put on his armor and grabbed his LMG, slapped down his helmet and slung his pistol holster onto his thigh, clipping it into place with little hesitation, all while the others prepped their kit, too.
"Would be a fucking blessing." Hassan commented in the meanwhile as he put his IVAS on, activated it and racked the bolt of his rifle to feed a fresh 6,8mm round into the chamber. He hummed, then looked over toward Jim, who chuckled, patting his own helmet down and clipping it into place. The fellow Ranger shrugged his shoulders, packed his kit with ammo and nodded to Victor and the others.
Jim then quipped, "Y'all just jinxed us, I'm sure. C'mon. Let's pack our kit and go if we're gonna go."
Saila, out of everyone, nodded eagerly, clearly ready to go hot once more with the lads. The group began their march out the door, Vic locking the door, the group then began a final check of their ammo counts. Vic made a mental note regarding his own 7,62x54 ammo, considering he needed to either keep the casings or make the perfect measurements. Eitherway...
"Make sure to make your shots count, folks." He added as he patted down the two extra boxes of ammunition he'd retrieved from his backpack. He then added calmly as he pulled his balaclava over his face, "Gonna be a while before I can scrape up a throwaway account and get us saltpeter and all the other shit necessary to drum up extra gunpowder so we can reload our rounds."
"You don't even need saltpeter to make it, I think. Just a bunch of normal ingredients I hope we can find in this place... Didn't you say this place uses something called 'Dust' as propellant for the bullets?" Hassan quipped. The group passed by students that were now returning to their rooms to prepare for tomorrow, whatever tomorrow might bring to them. Vic hummed.
"That's what I read, yeah," The Romanian then replied.
"Yeah, I'd feel better if we got proper gunpowder prod set up. Rather like our rounds, to be honest. God only knows what kinda fouling we'd get with the local stuff," Jim stated, while Saila seemed content with the ammo count she had and simply nodded in agreement, humming a tune to herself as they marched. It was a calming, but familiar tune to the lads.
"Same. If we meet any of those Black League fuckos, I'd rather have a full stock of ammo and everything else we needed. Let's mount up and go for the kill. Strength and muscle and Jungle work." Vic then stated as he patted down his LMG and looked to the grinning Saila. The girl nodded to him and checked over her Sako rifle He smirked and waited for the fellas to reply in kind...
"Strength and muscle and Jungle Work!" They all did, with Saila just humming the tune more loudly. The Soldiers laughed together as they boarded the transport bird that waited for them. Quickly, they made sure their IFAKs and other necessary items for the op were at the ready, with Hassan noting, "We got gas masks at the ready, just in case something shitty happens and the wind blows wrong."
"Fuck yeah, we do," Paul smirked, then both men and the rest of the group winced, looking to Victor.
"Ain't no fucking gas catching me lacking a second time..." Vic murmured, then grinned back at his team, confident. They all paused, sighed in relief, then smiled back at the boy. The gang then readied themselves as the craft moved in toward their target:A decently-sized abandoned industrial area. Immediately north of where they were landing, there was a broken steel gate through which they could go. Beyond it, they saw what looked to be an old factory meant for production of military equipment, the campus having a massive central building with smokestacks rising tall and broken and boarded-up windows.
There was also an abandoned office building to the far left, a hall where most of what seemed to be the old armored vehicles that had been assembled here were now decaying a little closer to the main factory building and a one-story brick building on the right. They readied their kit and dismounted as the first sights of White Fang troops were reported by Paul with a single motion of his hand. A sniper.
Vic lifted his right hand and curled his index and middle fingers slightly forward, before tilting his wrist. He looked back to Saila and showed her to take point, which the girl gladly obliged to as she hefted her Sako and pushed forward. She pulled a camo mask over her face as she lifted her AR and pushed through, the boys following close behind in a staggered column, watching window and wall and pie-ing around corners for ambushes.
Paul kept his eyes down the scope on his FAMAS as they advanced, locked onto the window where he'd spotted the first White Fang trooper. Vic, the second man in the column, gave Paul a hand signal. He and Hassan broke off to the right, rifles at the ready as they advanced toward an entry point. Vic, Saila and Jim proceeded to clear out the rest of the place around them, finding zero hostiles in the surrounding buildings, thankfully. Seemed the Fang only occupied the central building.
They had no intel going into it, Vic soon realized as they stacked up next to Paul and Hassan. Hassan took point this time, with Saila behind him and Vic pulling third. Paul was last in the stack, with Jim second to last. Vic lifted his left hand, leaning his LMG onto his right thigh as he held the stack, then lifted three fingers. Gradually, he brought them down. At three, the group tensed. At two, Hassan lifted his rifle. At one... Pause...
And when the finger for 'one' dropped, Hassan spun, quickly gave a check for explosives and kicked the door open at the lock, before Saila pulled and threw a fragmentation grenade into the building. The concussive blast shook the gang and nearly knocked the air out of their lungs, but they pushed forward with Hassan in the lead. Disgruntled sounds and screams of pain filtered out from the inside.
When Hass pushed in, the first sight was the clearing smoke. Second was the appearance of a disoriented Whiskey Foxtrot, his eardrums blown out. The Yankee Malaysian's rifle coughed, silenced 6,8mm snapping through the air and puncturing through the man's chest. The corpse dropped just as the rest of the team entered. Saila's rifle barked loudly as another White Fang soldier was tagged and dropped.
Vic hefted his LMG and opened up, a flurry of bullets striking a wall and a pair of White Fang that had just come around the corner. One man died on the spot, while the other managed to scramble back behind cover, blind-firing as the rest of the squad dispersed for the cover of the many rusted machines that once made up this factory's production floor. Paul came in next, having switched from his rifle to his LMG. The man fired bursts from the M249, accurate, deadly.
Behind him, Jim also pressed their advantage, rifle hissing repeatedly and rapidly as the suppressor warmed to a dull red. He hummed, drew his pistol and put two rounds clean through the skull of another WF soldier before crossing past a corner and pre-firing it to keep the enemy suppressed. Victor moved up behind him, setting his LMG on a crate and opening up the bipod.
Above, from the catwalks, White Fang soldiers finally began to fire back, One of them yelled, "Who the fuck are these guys?! Who'd we piss off this time!?"
Nobody you needed to worry about, Vic thought as he suppressed one of the two shooters with his LMG. A squad of Fang troopers poured out from a rear building onto the catwalks, boots clanking against the steel. Two fell first as Vic and Paul focused fire on them, all while Jim, Hassan and Saila pushed forward, lighter on their feet due to their Assault Rifles.
The White Fang troops on the ground started firing back at them, too. One bullet hit Saila's vest and bounced off, luckily for her. She had felt the hit and it had blunted her movement, slightly, but she quickly returned fire, supported by her comrades' fusilade. She ducked behind cover while Victor and Paul advanced, then pulled out another frag, primed it, pulled the pin and counted. Three, two, one... She threw it up onto the catwalk, where it immediately detonated, raining shrapnel into the squad above and giving the boys some breathing room.
Vic appeared first, setting his LMG up on the rusted machine and opening up. His belt clinked, spent casings dropping onto the floor next to Saila as the girl reloaded her rifle, all while Paul pushed up next to Jim and Hassan, still firing mostly bursts from the LMG. Vic ducked beside Saila, grinning behind his balaclava as he dropped the empty box of ammo, opening up the top and looking to the girl, "Having fun?"
She grinned behind her mask and nodded, too, before poking up and snapping off two more shots. A White Fang soldier's corpse audibly folded in on itself as it slammed into the concrete, even through all the gunfire. Vic ducked as a bullet snapped too close above his head, scraping his helmet. He swore to himself in Romanian, slammed down the top of the weapon and locked it into place, then stood up and fired a full burst toward the building the bastards were coming from.
He paused, however, as a blur of blue appeared behind them.
One White Fang soldier flew clean through a half-broken window frame, busting the thing fully, before bursts of automatic fire laced the air from an incredibly familiar rifle. Running out from the building and jumping through. She rolled onto her feet, spun about and put three rounds clean through a pair of Whiskey Foxtrots, before dropping the empty mag of her bullpup rifle, slamming in a fresh one and ramming the bolt home. In the meanwhile, she drew her sidearm and, without even looking, put one bullet through the skull of the bastard on her left, that was rushing her.
She holstered the pistol, stood to her feet and started running back, firing her assault rifle. She radioed in, "Friendly coming out! Don't shoot!" On all frequencies, a voice familiar to the entire gang and an accent all-too-odd. She turned to face them and stopped dead, braking in the middle of the firing line as she saw Victor standing to his feet. She blinked, pushing her full-rim glasses to the top of her nose. She smiled, "Vic...?"
"Sammy...?" Vic paused. He shook his head, set his MG down and drew his pistol, before charging forward and pushing her out of harm's way. A White Fang round snapped just between them, followed by the thunder of Victor's pistol. She turned around as well, firing her rifle into the rest as her team-mates marched up to support them. Samantha Lee, Lieutenant of the Misfits, fired her weapon in anger, the hair not pinned down by her helmet gently flowing with the wind kicked up by the automatic weapons fire around her.
She hummed as she saw the White Fang numbers dwindle to nothingness... And, loudly, she barked, "CEASE FIRE!" only to have her order answered within half a second. She looked around as all the soldiers around her took a moment to take her presence in. She noted all faces that appeared from behind the Balaclavas and Hassan's IVAS... Then, she beamed brightly, whispering, "You're all alive..." as tears welled in her eyes.
Vic holstered his pistol and smiled proudly, then barked out, "Attention on deck!" and multiple pairs of boots cracked against the concrete. Hassan had cleared the room quickly before he did it, making sure all foes were KIA as he came back. The group saluted their former Lieutenant, who snapped a crisp salute back, looking at all of them. Jim, Hassan, Paul, Saila... Vic.
"At ease..." Her voice quivered. She lifted up her glasses and wiped the tears from her eyes, "You, idiots..."
"Hey, Sam," Paul smirked, "We missed ya, too."
"I bet..." She whispered, rubbing her eyes with the inner part of her wrist, before taking her helmet off and sighing. She shook her head to straighten out her hair, before pulling out a handkerchief and wiping her glasses. She put them on, blinked, murmured, "Much better..." Then added, "I'm gonna hazard a guess and say you're all like me... Somehow died and woke up here."
Several affirmative replies came from the gang. She sighed deeply, shook her head, then chuckled, "Guess the apple really doesn't fall that far from the tree then, lady and gentlemen... I'm really happy to see you all alive after the clusterfuck that was Russia and I do want to catch up with you all, but uh..." She looked around, "I think we oughta not do it in a hall full of bodies, right...?"
"Right," Vic hummed, then lifted his Scroll and tapped away. Meanwhile, both Jim and Paul stared at Sam, the famed petite officer of the Misfits, as she and Saila now hugged it out. Despite her officer's rank, Sam was never one to deny a friendly hug from the gang. Ever. Paul looked at Jim while Hassan was busy packing away the bodies and doing the photo op for the contract, meaning photographing the dead, Paul chuckled, then eyed Sam.
The woman turned around and faced them, crossing her arms, "Good to see you're okay, Jim... Been a while."
"Sure has..." He nodded, "Good to see you, too, Sammy."
She chuckled, then looked up at Paul, murmuring, "Jesus Christ, look at how they massacred this boy..." and bringing her voice back to a normal level, "How in god's name did you wind up in the FFL of all places, Paul? Don't take it the wrong way, it's just..." She did the 'so-so' gesture, "Hungarian-French Relations were never really good, if my mind serves me right..."
"Hungary wasn't going to send Peacekeepers," Paul replied calmly, "Was the only way I could even remotely hope to find you folks... What about you?"
"PLA went in on the Neo-Soviet Union the moment they stopped playing along with us," Sammy sighed deeply, then pinched her brow, "My Division and another were sent to wipe the bastards out... I was lucky enough to be blasted by a tank before we even remotely got close to the enemy's capital. Even if we had, they'd created a river of cobalt between themselves and the Chernaya Liga. Was gonna be tough..."
"Black League and Neo-Soviets have territory..." Paul sighed, "Worrying."
"It'll be fine. We're already all dealing with them," The girl explained, before looking back toward Vic. The Romanian gave a thumbs up, to which she stated, "Well, fellas. Time to show me where y'all have been cooped up... I've mostly been sleeping in the dirt with my bivouac tent and I ran out of MREs a day ago." and she blushed slightly, scratching her cheek.
Paul snorted and nodded, then looked to Jim, who was also blushing. Vic gave a hand signal for the gang to rally up and led the way out to the transport. It was about goddamn time they found someone else, but they'd honestly expected Dushman. For all intents and purposes, though, the boys were sure Dushman was already running some bastard's fade somewhere.
And that thought alone made them all smile as they boarded the transport...