It wasn't a sunny day by any stretch, but it was a bright day. Giving Rayet lots of visibility that she wouldn't otherwise have. No precipitation, no wind either — so if she got into a gunfight, at least; things wouldn't be that bad for her. She was really hoping that she wouldn't be needing to count on lack of wind today.

It had been roughly a day since she'd last made camp, tracking the Martian force that was tracking the forward party of her resistance cell. She'd been moving roughly non-stop since then, tracking those who didn't belong on this land… Granted, she didn't much belong here either, but she at least could rationalize to herself that she belonged her more than these Martians did.

She trudged on, through the near-muddiness of the damp countryside, following the tracks in the mud that belonged to the land-car that was tracking ahead of her. She wasn't sure at this point, how or where they were at the moment, but they seemed to be following well enough the tracks left by the resistance cell, following them through tracks of forest and clearings that were along the path that had been previously discussed with her. She didn't need to know the muddy details of where to go, just follow well enough that she didn't need to worry about being trailed herself.

She didn't mind this trek, the silence of it all, just the sound of her boots falling into the slightly muddy hills and undergrowth, her breathing, and occasionally, the sound of breaks creaking somewhere in the distance. The Martians couldn't make that much headway compared to moving on foot, mostly due to the terrain that they were driving through in a vehicle that with what she'd seen — Rayet didn't think would be able to go through the terrain that much faster than she would be able to. Meaning that she was maintaining roughly the same distance always behind the vehicle, and then roughly the same distance behind the main force as well. The gray sky above, and the dark-green of pine trees around her as she moved ever forward.

She'd made it a mile in the time it took her to realize something was wrong. The tracks she was following, there was something wrong with them. Instead of just tracks, there were additional, more fresh tracks in the mud as she followed them. Boots belonging to additional soldiers that were riding inside the vehicle that was conveying them in the direction they were being baited towards.

That was roughly when she stopped her hike with her rifle over her shoulder, and put the stock against her shoulder instead, scanning the horizon around her for any sign of people or moving. She would stop on occasion, whenever she would notice a set of footprints moving away from the main track of soldiers. Scanning in the direction that they had meandered away in, yet finding nothing.

Was it possible that they realized that they were getting tracked? She had made sure that she was doing her best to never be within eye-shot of the vehicle or their encampments as they went. Meaning that something had gone wrong, and they realized that they were being led into a trap, or they were just being prudent.

She wouldn't exactly blame them if they were being prudent; although it would make things that much harder to engage them in a firefight in a day's time, if they were spread out throughout the valley instead of being in the vehicle as they were expected to be.

She continued for a way more, keeping track of how many pairs of footprints had moved away from the vehicle, meaning that at some point — at least half or more of the vehicle's occupants had disembarked from their vehicle. And at least the vehicle hadn't been abandoned completely at this point; as tracks were still being made.

It was at that moment, when she least expected it, if she was being honest, that there was a 'thwack' of something hitting the ground in front of her. It took only as long as the moment of the dirt arcing through the air from where it had been displaced by a bullet for the report of the rifle that had shot at her to reach her ears, and by that point, she was already digging with her feet to scramble to cover. Her rifle never leaving her shoulder as she practically slid into place behind a tree, as more 'thwacks' hit the ground around her.

At least she was on the right side of the tree to not get hit by whoever it was shooting at her.

She took a breath in, a breath out before she tried to use her ears to get a fix on what direction she was getting shot at from. Just to the right of her six o'clock. She rapidly checked the chamber of her rifle, doing her best to not eject a round from it with shaky hands and a mind that was racing faster than she could keep track of it with.

She took a breath in, and spun on the ground to point her rifle downrange, in the direction she was getting shot at from. There was a 'thwack' of a round careening into the tree beside her head, she flinched. Trying to focus one of her eyes down the scope of her rifle, finger hovering above the trigger of her trusted companion.

She got a glimpse of the soldier, running from tree to tree, only wearing a dark-colored uniform with some body armor on top, his helmet was nowhere to be seen. She focused as best she could on leading her shot towards his legs, figuring that any rounds into his body-armor would just incapacitate him momentarily.

She squeezed the trigger of her rifle, and it bucked into her shoulder, sending the round towards the soldier, and tearing through his leg on one side, and exiting on the other. He went tumbling to the ground, bits of red spewing from his leg as he tumbled.

She watched him fall through her scope, his uniform catching and smearing in the dirt, mud spiraling around him as he went down. A Martian soldier, one on the side that maybe once upon a time, if given a different circumstance of her birth, she would've known, that she would've fought with, or she would've died for.

She racked a new round into the chamber, and kept her scope on the man, who was doing his best to belly-crawl towards cover behind a tree. This man, who could very well have been fighting for the holiest of causes — and himself a saint in that respect. She focused the scope on his head, letting loose another round, sending up a red-flash from his head. Metal making contact with flesh and bone. He stopped moving altogether.

Silenced.

Martians didn't deserve that kind of respect from her.

She started to swing to her right to track another soldier, when there was a crack in her shoulder that rattled through her body and sent searing hot fragments of pain through her arm and chest. Her vision almost blacked out, and she rolled around to the tree, blood pouring from the wound in her shoulder, through her coat and clothes. She winced, hard, as she pressed down on the wound with an open hand, her vision filling with white as she did.

She didn't hear, nor could she have, the boot-steps behind her tree, approaching her as she tried her best to stem the flow of blood.

There was a crack of metal and rubber against flesh, and she slumped to the dirt and mud.

She'd been resummoned to the Council Chambers. She wasn't entirely sure why, but at least she had the benefit of still being on-station when she'd received word that she was wanted once again. She didn't mind it, as it gave her something to do, something to occupy her time that wasn't just idling around the station, or sitting in on meetings that didn't particularly matter to her.

"Jessamine Ainzel, reporting as requested." She said, standing behind the lectern as she'd been instructed to, modeling her speech after the same way that Yuki had the day before.

"Miss Ainzel, please confirm for the record that you were not formally drafted as a UFE Intelligence Officer, correct?"

"Correct, I was not. However I was formally trained as one as part of my high-school education in Denver." Jessamine says, her voice getting picked up by unseen microphones.

"And with that training, you acted in accordance with what you believed was the best course of action for your time and limited knowledge of what had happened, following Operation Earthfall?"

"Yes, I did. I made my way towards the one place I figured I could get to, that needed someone with intelligence collection training, to try and figure out what was happening on the ground."

The voice spoke again, it was the same woman from meetings prior and from her own testimony before. "You did this without any knowledge that you would be able to be retrieved from the New Orleans area, correct?"

"Correct."

"Why?"

Jessamine pauses at this, opening her mouth to say something, but then scowling and closing her mouth again, as she realizes she doesn't really have an answer to this question.

"I'm… Not sure…?"

"That's not a very good answer, Miss Ainzel." A second voice prompts.

Jessamine would glare at the person if she could see where they were sitting, "I… Operated as I did because I believed it would be helpful in the long run. And it gave me something to do."

"'Something to do'?"

"Yeah. It was better than hiding in a shelter, waiting for the worst to come to pass." Jessamine explains, a rush of blood in her legs telling her that she was suddenly anxious about this. How ironic; spending all those months in the occupied sector around a Landing Castle, and never once having gotten anxious about anything — but talking in front of a Council, justifying her actions would. "I'm not one to just sit around and wait for things to happen to me."

"What about now?" A new voice speaks, this one she doesn't recognize at all from any of the other meetings she's sat in on. "Would you still do the same things you did then, if you knew what you knew now?"

"The only thing I would've done better would be to try and save more people."

This had always been true. She had never been one to just sit around and wait for things to happen to her, to wait for the worst to come and pass by her. She had always been the one to volunteer for the CPR drills, and the First-Aid demonstrations, all to figure out how to better help people. Granted, if she had truly put that much stock in being a hero, she may have considered following her training path into being a combat medic, or something like that. Although, in hindsight — she wasn't entirely sure she would've lasted that long in the war if she had. The military training that she had received hadn't been as extensive as something like a Basic Training regimen, or anything formal. It was just to check the boxes on what she was supposed to learn, as mandated by the UE.

Sure, she had acted as if she had been an officer of the UFE all along, doing what she thought needed to be done. And by no stretch of the imagination did she think that she was going to be rewarded for it. She just merely did what she thought needed to be done, based on what she could do. If she was a doctor, she figured she probably would've stayed in the Denver area, and instead taken her time trying to patch up people as she found them, and keep them alive. But she wasn't a doctor, so she didn't.

"That's good." The voice says, and there's the creaking of leather as the figure in darkness presumably leans back in his chair.

"We're organizing a mission, as sanctioned by the UFE, to return to the surface, and acquire some key intelligence for this Council." The first voice explains. "Comprised of Intelligence Officers, acting in accordance with the Armistice, to gather information from those civilians still in the occupied areas, about what they have lived through, and what intelligence they still have to offer."

"The mission will be comprised of several teams, each tackling their own area of responsibility." The new voice explains. "Anyone in the team who is a civilian will be deputized to the rank and position relative to the role they would play on the team. We would like you to lead one of those teams."

"Me, sir?" Jessamine asks, after a stunned moment. "I think there are more qualified—"

"Not as many as you would think." The voice interrupts her. "And certainly not that many who are familiar with the terrain and area as you are, Miss Ainzel."

"Are you sending me back to New Orleans?"

"Yes, that would be one area of responsibility. You would also be tasked with going in the direction of Seattle, and then finally Shinawara, Japan."

"Why there, sir?"

"Because it is the only formerly civilized location on the map that had a landing castle in it, and then didn't. The effects of being occupied and then unoccupied should be expected to be dramatic, and we would like you to catalog that."

"Who would be coming along?" Jessamine asked, genuinely curious about the composition of said teams, and what that would look like.

"Anyone of the UFE you see fit. At least one team is bringing along a detachment of Marines, another is flying completely solo. The composition of your team is up to you."

"How soon would you want a roster?"

"The sooner the better, but if you need time, that's understandable and we don't mind giving you up to a week to settle on a roster." The voice responds.

"I'll be sure to have a roster for you then."

"We look forward to then, Intelligence Officer Ainzel."

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