Kuchinashi Streets
The impact jolted Whitley awake.
His eyes popped open and immediately began to dart in every direction. All he could hear was the rapid warning tone from his drop pod and his own labored breathing.
After a few seconds of frantically checking his own body for wounds, he finally started to regain his bearings. Taking a few deep breaths to calm himself, Whitley began to do what he did best.
His eyes now scanned the interior of the pod, letting his equilibrium set itself while he took stock of his situation.
It was then that he realized that he was lying on his side.
Whitley was leaning against the inner wall on the right side of the drop pod. He was thankful that none of the casing was breached. Even the canopy's bulletproof glass had held, although severely cracked in several spots.
Despite feeling groggy and wincing at the few minor aches he had, he deemed himself fairly unscathed. Whitley assumed that without his Mark II armor or the robust protection that his drop pod provided, his internal organs would have been liquefied by the force of the impact.
"I believe I owe Pietro an endless shower of gratitude when I get back."
His carbine was still secure in its weapons rack, and after a quick inspection of the rest of his equipment, he sighed in relief. He calmly began undoing the straps of his safety harness, feeling the satisfaction of the last of his brain fog dissipating from his mind.
"I don't think I'm hurt, my armor isn't damaged, and I didn't lose any of my gear."
Whitley heard several thuds against his canopy window.
He looked back up from his armor and saw new spiderweb cracks form on the bulletproof glass with each thud. After hearing the accompanying pings of the metal hull of his pod being hit several times, a shot of adrenaline surged through Whitley like lightning.
"Someone is already shooting at me! I have to move!"
He frantically pounded each of the buttons on his canopy to trigger the ejection pins and was rewarded with a beeping warning tone. As he heard the click of the safety latches being retracted, he leaned forward into his seat and placed one hand on the barrel of his carbine.
His anxiety grew as the seconds ticked by, Whitley's breathing becoming heavier as he listened to more rounds plinking off of the armor plating of his drop pod.
The teenage Schnee anticipated what he would need to do within the next few seconds. He stared intently at the canopy door, mentally rehearsing what his actions would be once the door blew open. Knowing that the pod was resting on its side, he knew that he would have to get to his feet quickly before he could even begin running.
"If I'm being shot at already, then any hesitation in leaving this pod is a death sentence! I have no chance if I am not perfect!"
The ejection pins exploded, blasting the canopy door off its hinges. The door rocketed away from the drop pod, flying for a dozen yards before violently crashing onto the asphalt street.
Whitley rolled out of his seat and pulled his carbine from its weapons rack in a single fluid motion. Once he was sure he cleared the threshold of the drop pod, he immediately pushed himself up with one arm and turned to his right.
He elected to sprint down the road behind his pod, which would hopefully put some extra distance between himself and whoever was shooting at him.
The rookie ADT quickly spotted a concrete barrier that was placed on the road roughly twenty yards in front of him. He decided that this was his destination and kept up the pace of his dead sprint.
He held his rifle in one hand with its barrel pointed to the sky, just as his elder sister had instructed him to do when bounding from cover to cover.
As the concrete barrier grew closer, Whitley could hear the harsh snaps of incoming rounds impacting off of the pavement around him. All he could think of besides reaching the concrete roadblock as soon as possible, was that running out in the open like this without any covering fire was not ideal.
Just as Whitley was within a few yards from his new cover, he felt a powerful impact against his shoulder blade, the force enough to knock him to the ground. If he didn't know any better, he would have thought that someone had just bashed him with a sledgehammer.
As he fell, he saw his carbine clatter to the ground in front of him and heard the distinct whizzing sound of a ricochet.
He landed on his stomach, his visor receiving a nice view of the asphalt for a split second before he scrambled to his feet faster than he ever had in his entire life.
Scooping up his rifle once again, he zipped behind the protection of the roadblock.
Whitley took a knee behind the concrete, struggling to catch his breath with hot pulses of adrenaline violently pumping through his veins. He quickly whipped his arm around his back where the impact happened on instinct, but didn't feel anything abnormal.
"Did I just get shot?!"
The young ADT glanced up at his health monitor located at the top of his visor, but it gave him no indication that he had been wounded. Since his monitor said he was fine and he didn't feel like he was wounded, he figured that he had just been hit by a round that ricocheted off the backplate of his power armor.
"Pietro Polendina, you saint of a man! You've already saved my life twice today!"
At that moment, Whitley decided that he would need to find a way to pay the scientist back after this mission. He also had a feeling that this wouldn't be the last time he would be singing his praises before the evening was done.
Hearing the continuous snaps of incoming rounds impacting against the concrete barrier brought Whitley back into the present.
He remembered during the briefing on the Here We Go Again that the rules of engagement prioritized saving civilians and to avoid combat situations when possible.
He snapped his head to his left and his right so that he could get a grasp of his surroundings.
He was in the middle of the street taking cover behind a concrete roadblock. On each side of him were two-story buildings on each side and no alleyways that were reasonably close to him.
The enemy fire showed no signs of letting up, so for better or worse, he knew that whoever was trying to kill him was determined to finish the job. He couldn't rule out the possibility of these enemies pursuing him even if he got away, especially since they already knew that he was by himself.
After briefly considering trying to slip away, he shook his head.
"I already got hit once by these guys trying to run down this road and in order to reach a building, I would have to leave my cover for an uncomfortable amount of time. Not even using the damaged cars for cover would help me all that much," he mused out loud to himself, in the back of his mind knowing that his recording was capturing Whitley Schnee talking to himself.
However, it was hard to really care about that when the danger of being killed by unknown men loomed over him. After all, he figured that everything shown in this recording could be used later for future training or tactics development.
If he makes it back alive.
"No. I'm fighting these guys."
He shouldered his carbine and began to step towards the opposite end of the concrete barrier, away from where he had just come from. If he was going to fight these guys, first he needed to know where they were.
Keeping himself crouched behind the concrete, he canted his rifle at an angle as he cautiously pied around the corner of the barrier.
His eyes peered down the road where the enemy fire had been coming from, looking past multiple destroyed vehicles and his own black drop pod, still lying on its side in the center of the street. Further down the road another fifty yards, he could see moving silhouettes and muzzle flashes coming from a sandbag wall.
It was then that the TRACK system in his visor got to work.
The Target Recognition And Confirmation Key tagged the enemy contacts behind the sandbag wall with red diamonds on Whitley's visor, showing him that there were five of them. The red diamonds on his display were able to stick with each of the contacts, even when they ducked behind the sandbags to reload, making it easy for Whitley to never lose sight of any of them.
He then heard a snap near his head, causing him to jerk his body back into cover. The teen silently cursed to himself as he realized that they had spotted him at the other end of the concrete barrier.
"It's five against one. I need help!"
"Frost Lead! Frost Lead! Come in, over!" Whitley shouted, opening the preset radio channel he had with Frost Stack.
From the direction of the enemy, he could make out shouting in between the gunshots, making him uneasy. Whatever it was that they were communicating with each other about, it couldn't be good for the Schnee.
He heard nothing but dead air on the radio after a few seconds, so he tried again.
"Frost Lead! Frost Lead! This is Snowdrift! How copy, over!?"
He pied the corner again to get a visual on his adversaries and saw that three of them had hopped over the sandbag wall. The other two kept firing in his direction as their comrades advanced on his position, each of the red diamonds from his TRACK system remaining tagged to their respective contact.
He saw from their garb that it was a blend of civilian attire and what looked like gear that someone could pick up from a military surplus store. Because of that, Whitley assumed that they were a rebel group of some kind. Thankfully, they did not appear to be one of the more distinct rebel groups that he had read about that wore special identifiers for their members. If these guys were neither as well-trained nor as brutal as some of the groups he reviewed, it would be a small mercy for him.
"Hopefully these guys are just local gang scum then. I need every advantage I can get."
Whitley immediately took aim and fired on the three bounding gunmen, the muted cracks of his suppressed carbine joining the cacophony of gunfire.
The lone teen held his carbine in a c-clamp grip as he fired single shots into the lead man, trying to be as precise as possible. He was rewarded with the orange flashes that he could see from the lead man's aura taking the hits.
Before Whitley could put enough shots into the man to exhaust his aura, he disappeared behind the husk of a burned-out car. Reacting with instinct, Whitley switched targets to the second man and saw him drop like a puppet with its strings cut after he had only put three shots into him.
"No aura?"
One incoming round slamming into the concrete right next to him caused Whitley to reflexively duck back into cover before he could begin shooting at the third attacker.
"Frost Lead! Frost Lead! I am pinned down by a hostile fireteam-sized element! I have taken cover behind a barricade, and I believe that I dropped one with no aura! I don't know what street I'm on! Requesting support! Over!" he spoke rapidly into his helmet, peeking around the corner once more to see that the other two men back at the sandbag wall were moving towards him as well.
He quickly put his scope on one of the two and squeezed the trigger of his carbine with a much more frantic pace, causing his target's aura to flare blue several times before moving behind a bus that had most of its tires popped. Whitley didn't even have time to begin engaging the second man before gunfire from the other two guys behind the destroyed car forced the Schnee behind cover again.
"This is bad," he thought with a grimace.
The two men behind the remains of the destroyed car were approaching him from the left side of the street, and the other two at the bus were on the right side of the street.
It didn't take long for Whitley to realize what they were doing.
A pincer attack.
To make matters worse, he had received zero response from his radio. He knew from studying this mission that the Mistrali Army had set up several jamming facilities in a few different locations in Kuchinashi, but the cruise missiles from the ADT dropships were supposed to take them all out. Whitley supposed that this meant that at least one of the jamming facilities was still operational.
"Come to think of it, I didn't hear any comms in my drop pod either."
Whitley quickly popped out of cover and fired three rounds into the destroyed car and then snapped to his right to do the same to the bus. He hoped that would keep both groups suppressed for at least a bit. A split second before he ducked behind the barricade once more, his TRACK system had helped him notice that only one of the two guys behind the demolished car had taken cover behind the engine block.
"The only place a car can reliably stop a bullet is the engine block," he quietly recited to himself.
Those were not his own words, but a quote that he had ripped word for word from Winter.
He remembered his eldest sister saying that to him during one of her infantry training sessions that were part of his Aerial Drop Trooper curriculum.
"That little bitch is cowering behind the concrete!" one of the men called out.
"We know that dipshit!" another harshly retorted.
As Whitley pied around the corner, he decided that this was the last time he would use this side of the barricade. He had noticed that the impacts of incoming rounds were getting closer and closer each time he exposed himself on this side. He knew that if he kept popping out of cover in the same spot every time, eventually he would get shot in the face.
He spotted the red diamond for the rebel that was taking cover behind the rear doors of the sedan and dumped the rest of his magazine into that spot. After being rewarded with the sight of the man slumping to the ground from behind the car, Whitley immediately began moving towards the other side of the barricade.
Keeping himself crouched behind cover, he fished out a fresh magazine from his chest rig and slipped the spent magazine into its slot. By the time he had inserted the fresh mag inside his carbine and slapped the bolt home, the rookie ADT had reached the other end of the barricade.
"Three of them left. What now?" he said out loud, as if challenging himself.
The Schnee had not even noticed that his spiked adrenaline was keeping him both wired and completely focused on his situation. Whereas himself from two years would likely have been too paralyzed with fear to do anything, adrenaline and perhaps his ADT training were keeping him on the level for the time being.
As he listened to the never-ending snaps of rounds hitting the concrete and the shouts from the remaining three rebels, his brain cooked an idea.
Slipping his hand into the grenade pouch on his left hip, he retrieved a purple grenade and removed the safety clip from it, giving him access to the pin. He used his carbine's sling to throw the primary weapon over his back to make himself more comfortable.
"Grav grenades have an effective range of fifteen meters from the blast radius. If I throw it right down the center of the street, it should affect all three of them."
Taking a deep breath, Whitley pulled the pin of the gravity dust grenade and kept his left hand in a death grip over the fuse. He pied the corner of the barricade and looked for a good spot on the ground between the burned-out sedan and the bus to toss the grenade.
Once he found it, his eyes lit up in anxious excitement.
"There!"
On his knees behind the concrete, he pointed his right hand at his target location while his left arm arched back and tossed the grenade.
The second the purple explosive left his hand, the fuse on the side of the grenade was released. Whitley saw it hit the ground a few feet from his intended target area and watched with satisfaction as the grenade bounced off the asphalt and landed almost exactly where he wanted it.
Retrieving his carbine from his back, the eighteen-year-old ducked behind the concrete and waited. His breath hitched in anticipation as the next few seconds ticked by, knowing that if his plan was to succeed, he would need to be quick and not give the rebels a second of levity.
Once he heard the explosion of the grenade, Whitley leaned around the corner with his carbine pointing downrange, holding it in the c-clamp style once again.
He didn't have to wait long before he was rewarded by the startled shouts of the three men as he watched all of them get pulled into the grenade's temporary gravity well.
The rebels tried to fight the pull of the concentrated gravity dust, trying to flee even as their boots scraped against the pavement in futility. Whitley also knew that since they weren't expecting something like this, there was little chance of them being able to return fire in their state. Neither the men from the bus nor the one remaining rebel from the car could resist as the gravity grenade pulled all three men toward the center of the street.
"And most importantly, away from their cover."
The second he saw an opportunity, Whitley instantly began putting rounds into the body of the first rebel to be exposed, which in this case was one of the men from the bus. The first rebel went down only after a couple of shots to the torso, his body flopping to the ground unceremoniously.
The young ADT switched targets on the fly just as he had drilled, firing several shots into the man from the car, his orange aura shattering and then was brought down with a few follow-on shots to his center-of-mass.
The last rebel got the worst of it, with Whitley mag dumping him, his blue aura breaking so quickly that the Schnee couldn't even see it flare from absorbing damage.
Once his carbine ran dry, Whitley gazed out at the small pile of dead rebels that he had made. He reloaded his magazine as his eyes scanned over each body, and it only took a few seconds to convince him that all five of them were completely flatlined.
"It worked."
He spoke those words quietly as if trying to convince himself that what he had just done was real and not some wild fever dream. Even as he stared at his handiwork, the fact that he had just taken down five armed men by himself was something that his brain just could not compute.
He had done it.
He had won a firefight being outnumbered five-to-one.
He didn't just win, he had annihilated them.
Whitley Schnee accomplished that.
Many people around Remnant would never believe a statement like that and he would never blame them since he could not believe it himself.
The lone trooper tapped himself on the helmet to bring himself back to reality.
"Now I have to get out of here. Who knows who heard that firefight and will come to investigate," he said aloud for both the camera's sake and his own.
Spurring himself into action, he opened up his visor's pre-loaded map of Kuchinashi and began to peruse through it, trying to decide the direction he should start moving in.
On the map, he could see a nearby park that was covered with a large white circle.
From what he could see on the map, this park was the closest suspected civilian position to where he was.
"That looks, what? Five blocks from here? Six?"
He took a second to judge the distance on the map before he concluded that he should move there and try to find any civilians that might need help.
"And maybe other ADTs dropped near here and also chose to go there. I could link up with them," he thought, considering it a solid plan.
He turned his back to the scene of his first firefight and began moving toward the park at a jogging pace.
Whitley figured that he had crossed two blocks so far.
It had taken him some time to make it this far since he was moving cautiously from cover to cover. Most of his stops were made up of abandoned vehicles and the odd barricade or sandbag wall. There was one instance where he took cover behind rubble that looked like it came from a bank that had its brick wall blown open.
"Considering this is Kuchinashi, I would be surprised if looters haven't cleaned it out by now," he thought when he made his way past it.
The fact that he had to move alone through a hostile city where an attack could come from anywhere kept him on edge.
Most of the buildings in this part of Kuchinashi were either two-story residential or three-story businesses. The alleyways seemed to be fairly inconsistent, with some stretches of buildings having them while others didn't.
"I can get sniped from any of these windows," he said to himself, glancing up at the rows of windows above him as he moved down the sidewalk with his rifle raised in case he had to return fire at a moment's notice.
"If I get hit, I get hit," Whitley mentally told himself, plagiarizing another of his sister's sayings.
He knew that there was no point in worrying over every single window or alley, there were simply too many for him to check thoroughly, so he just gave each brick building a basic scan with his eyes before moving on.
Whitley had tried to raise Frost Stack once again on the radio but just like before, received nothing but dead air. He had expected as much but figured it was worth a shot to try.
Following his map, he turned right at the next intersection, keeping himself on what he assumed was the best route to the park.
As he turned, he was greeted by the sight of an ambushed Mistrali Army convoy.
While he was visually sweeping over the convoy with his carbine at the ready, Whitley saw that a tank with its treads blown off had led the convoy. The tank's engine in the rear was still on fire, and as he walked past it, saw the hole in the side of the tank where a shaped charge had punched through the armor.
Also on the ground were the bodies of two men, recognizing that one of the men was distinctly wearing a Mistrali tank driver's hat. Since he couldn't see the third man, the Schnee assumed that he had died inside the tank when it initially got hit.
"I guess someone hit this tank with a rocket and then waited for the crew to bail out before gunning them down," Whitley reasoned, briefly pondering the brutality of such a tactic.
Peeling his eyes away from the tank, he saw that it had been followed by two light-skinned military vehicles, both with a machine gun turret on each respective roof. Both of these transports showed signs of having been shredded by small arms fire, with dozens of bullet holes in their frames and pronounced cracks on every bulletproof window.
The two vehicles were surrounded by the bodies of over a dozen Mistrali conscripts littering the road around them. It seemed like each body was contorted in a different position, with many of them having a puddle of red that had pooled under them.
Whitley kicked away spent shell casings that were in his path as he moved down the sidewalk and past the gruesome scene, thankful that he couldn't smell the dead because his helmet was fully sealed.
He kept himself on high alert every second he was on that street, anticipating that whoever had done this was still around and might try to ambush him too. But as he got further and further down the street, it became clear to him that the attackers were likely long gone.
The lone trooper took a left at the next intersection and realized that the evening was growing darker by the minute. He also saw that the first raindrops were beginning to fall, although it only seemed to be a sprinkle so far. Since a thunderstorm was forecasted tonight, he knew that the rain would likely get heavier soon.
He constantly kept his eyes peeled for any possible threats around him, but he found nothing out of the ordinary as he continued to move down the street, taking cover behind abandoned vehicles when he could.
Because of this lapse of excitement, his mind began to wander a little as he advanced.
"I killed people. I just ended five lives. Shouldn't I feel sick or remorseful or something? Also, I didn't really feel a thing when I saw those bodies from that convoy. Am I psychotic?" he thought with an awkward frown on his face.
Whitley took a knee behind a damaged food truck. Once he reached it, his thoughts continued to drift in a direction that made him uncomfortable.
"Is something wrong with me? Does this mean I'm actually an evil person?"
That was when a memory from a long time ago flashed in his mind.
For a second, he could see the image of a twelve-year-old Weiss standing before him with tears running down her cheeks.
Whitley vividly remembered that heartbroken face.
And he remembered what his own face looked like in that moment.
"Perhaps I've always been…"
A sudden whistling sound ripped Whitley back into reality.
Knowing exactly what that sound was from his training, he immediately hit the deck, dropping onto his stomach.
He watched as an artillery shell slammed into the second story of a residential building a few structures down from him on the opposite end of the street. The force of the explosion smashed the wall that was facing the street into chunks, raining debris down onto the pavement.
The Schnee knew that if he wasn't wearing his helmet, his ears would probably be bleeding right now.
"Damn Mistrali Army firing wildly! Learn how to aim instead of trying to level your own city!" he angrily barked in frustration.
Even though he knew they couldn't hear him, shouting at them did feel cathartic.
Whitley got to his feet quickly and began sprinting down the street, his carbine in his left arm with it aimed at the sky, and his breath huffing as he barreled through the next intersection.
If Mistrali artillery was zeroed in at that grid square, Whitley wanted to be as far away as possible if they fired again. He only hoped that the Mistralis weren't targeting him specifically and that this was just a classic case of their incompetence.
The Aerial Drop Trooper kept up the sprinting pace for as long as he could before stopping to take cover behind an abandoned supply truck.
Catching his breath, he looked back at where he had come from and estimated that he had covered a block and a half during his sprint. Although he was glad that he was almost to the park, he was disappointed that the weight of all his gear prevented him from keeping that pace the rest of the way.
Whitley decided that this was as good a time as any for a short rest and took a knee.
The sky above him was getting darker and he assessed that he would probably need his night vision active in the next half hour or so. It was surprising to him that the rain was still just sprinkling for now, but he knew that wouldn't last.
He pried his helmet off of his head and allowed his face to feel the cool autumn air of Kuchinashi for the first time.
Pulling out a plastic tube that was hooked to his backplate, he placed his lips over the end and took a sip from his trusty ADT-pattern AquaBak. After putting away the plastic tube, he slid his helmet back on and took a deep breath.
Fate still refused to be kind to the lone trooper.
Now he was hearing men conversing from somewhere on the left side of the street.
Listening intently, Whitley could also make out their footsteps getting closer, prompting him to look in the direction of an alleyway that was not far in front of him.
Leaning around the corner of the supply truck's engine block, he waited for these unknown contacts to reveal themselves with his suppressed carbine trained on the exit of the alley.
What the Aerial Drop Trooper saw through his scope caused his heart to jump in his chest.
Four armed men emerged from the alley and were armed with Mistrali service rifles that they had probably scavenged from dead soldiers.
Most notably, they all wore matching civilian attire.
Whitley squeezed the trigger immediately in response to seeing their outfits, the first man dying before his body even dropped from two clean shots to the heart.
Moving with machine-like determination, he put a few shots into the second man, causing his aura to flash a bright red.
"Holy shit!" one of the men exclaimed as all three of them scrambled back into the alleyway.
As Whitley saw them disappear, he quickly grabbed a green frag grenade from the pouch on his right hip and removed the safety clip. Keeping his eyes glued to the alley entrance, he pulled the pin and chucked it with all of his strength at the far wall.
The red diamonds courtesy of his TRACK sensor showed all three of them tightly packed together somewhere near the entrance to the alley.
"Those bastards are probably stacking up on the near wall, so I hope my grenade bounces right into them!"
He relished the sight of his frag grenade getting a perfect bounce and after a few seconds, he heard the blast of the detonation being promptly followed by the screams of at least two men.
Acknowledging that he had to be hyper-aggressive to keep his enemies from organizing themselves, Whitley charged directly towards the edge of the near wall.
"Fuck! Fuck! I can't see! I can't fucking see!" he heard one of the men sobbing in agony from within the alley.
When he made it to the edge of the near wall, Whitley hastily extended his arms, letting his carbine blind fire around the corner while keeping himself safe. He put several shots into the alleyway, hoping to hit the survivors of his grenade.
Once he stopped hearing the wounded man's crying and screaming, the Schnee stopped firing and swiftly charged around the corner and into the alleyway.
He was greeted by the sight of two corpses lined up against the near wall, just as Whitley had suspected they would be. He could see some blood spatter on the wall and also could make out damage to its surface from his grenade's shrapnel fragments.
His eyes then locked onto the third man, who was obviously wounded. Whitley assumed that this guy was the one with the red aura. Seeing the wounded man crawling desperately towards his discarded rifle put the ADT on edge.
"Die fucker!" the wounded man defiantly shouted, ignoring the massive bleeding from his legs.
The second he managed to touch his rifle, Whitley abruptly put a single shot through his skull.
Whitley took one last glance at all four dead men before exiting the alley and bounding back onto the street. He saw a taxi with all of its windows shattered and took cover behind it.
His heart was throbbing in his head from the sheer adrenaline that pumped through him and his breathing was ragged, so he took a knee to compose himself.
"I didn't think I would actually come across those guys," he rasped to himself.
There was no mistaking who those men were once he saw what they were wearing.
The matching white shirts and jeans that all four men wore were by themselves no cause for alarm, if a little odd to see.
It was the black berets they wore on their heads and the red tape wrapped around their arms that made the Schnee open fire on them.
The black beret and red tape were the symbols of the Exterminators.
From what Whitley had read, the Exterminators were a local militia in Kuchinashi. Their ranks were made up of former Mistrali Army soldiers who deserted because they felt that the Mistral government was not hard enough on the Faunus.
Their organization's stated goal, which they themselves announced publicly, was to ethnically cleanse Faunus individuals from Mistrali cities.
They were one of the human supremacist militias that he had seen in the files when conducting research on the local area for this mission. He also read that these guys regularly got into intense engagements with the White Fang ever since the chaos of the rebellion in Kuchinashi began.
No matter who the losers of those battles were, their treatment was always barbaric.
Once Whitley felt himself begin to settle down, he took another deep breath and reoriented his thoughts toward his next task.
"I'm almost to the park. I just have to make a right turn at the next intersection and it will basically be right in front of me."
Nodding to himself, he rose to his feet and continued his trek to his destination, hoping that the most difficult part of his evening was behind him.
The sight of dozens of white refugee tents greeted Whitley when he arrived at the interior of the park.
The tents were neatly aligned at the center of the park, which was a massive clearing covered in neatly trimmed green grass. The tents were long in length and were perfectly aligned in five rows with what Whitley guessed were walkways in between them. Some of the tents had first-aid iconography displayed on their sides, and he could see pallets of supplies and portable generators placed near many of them.
He had to make his way through a man-made forest belt to reach the center of the park, which was something the teenager had not expected.
Said forest belt wrapped around the entire perimeter of the park and contained numerous paved and unpaved paths. Small ponds and trees dominated this forest, and there was enough vegetation to conceal the view of the inner sanctum of the park from the street on every side.
As Whitley started approaching the refugee camp in the park, he momentarily peered up at some of the buildings that towered over the trees of the forest belt. To minimize the time he was vulnerable, he decided to stride the distance from the end of the forest belt to the tents.
"I really hope I don't get sniped while I'm out in the open like this," he thought, feeling nervous about how exposed he was crossing the field.
As he got closer, the camp grew in his vision, and he saw that not a single person could be seen outside of the tents. He figured this made sense when he considered the storm cell clouds growing above him, still preparing to strike.
It didn't take him long to reach the refugee camp, and once he did, he decided to clear the tent that he was the closest to. Opening the flap, he entered the first tent cautiously, snapping his carbine left and right quickly to clear the interior.
"Hello? Aerial Drop Trooper! I'm here to help!" Whitley declared with his best professional tone.
Realizing that the tent was clear, he let his gaze drop from his scope as he relaxed from his tactical posture.
Taking a more thorough look around the tent, he could see dozens of makeshift beds and personal items placed near them. Stepping through the walkways between rows of beds, he saw a multitude of clothes, toiletries, suitcases, children's toys, and even a few radios mixed in with the personal belongings of the people here.
"Or at least the people who are supposed to be here."
There wasn't a single civilian inside of this tent.
The fact that this tent had clear evidence of having been lived in and contained the belongings of many Kuchinashi civilians confused Whitley. The presence of the items ruled out the camp not being used in his mind, so that meant that the civilians were here but moved somewhere.
"So where is everyone? Did they all file into a different tent? Did the weather forecast convince everyone to leave the tents and go back to their homes or something?" he pondered, trying to consider any logical explanation as to why the tent was empty.
He took a seat on one of the beds to rest his legs and thought about his next move.
"Alright, I guess I will clear the rest of the tents and if I don't find anyone, I suppose I'll just move on to the next designated spot on my map," he said out loud to himself and his recording, removing his helmet and taking another sip from his AquaBak.
After about a minute of resting and looking around the tent, Whitley ran his gloved hand through his hair before he slipped his helmet back on and stood up with a sigh. Making his way to the exit of the tent, he wondered if attempting to clear the rest of the tents one by one would be a waste of time or not.
Once he was outside, he was surprised that the rain was still only sprinkling at this time. As far as the forecast had said, it should have been pouring down rain by now.
He put that thought out of his mind as he approached the next refugee tent in the row.
The young ADT reassumed his tactical posture and entered the set of flap doors with his carbine raised, taking the proper precautions to clear the tent.
"Aerial Drop Trooper! I'm here to help!" he shouted, repeating his actions with the first tent.
Whitley let his grip on his carbine slack as he realized that this tent was also a complete ghost town.
He saw much of the same from the first tent, dozens of beds that were surrounded by the personal effects of many people.
Seeing this, he immediately left the tent and moved to clear out the next tent in the row.
This tent appeared to be a community cafeteria of sorts from what Whitley guessed.
It was filled with rows of chairs and tables that were covered by white cloth. There were several pallets of food and bottled water supplies lined up against both walls of the tent on either side. He could see that the kitchen at the back of the tent was large enough to accommodate scores of cooks and food service personnel, but there was no one.
No hungry civilians, no aid workers.
So he left the tent and began to move to the next, on his way noticing that none of the portable generators were active, which he found strange.
"Wouldn't having any power at all be essential for these refugees? Especially since there's going to be a storm tonight?"
The tent he entered after the cafeteria was empty, just like the others.
Growing more frustrated with failing to find anyone, he spent the next few minutes rapidly clearing every tent in the encampment.
Each time, he found no one.
Leaving the final tent that he had just finished clearing, he pulled up the map on his heads-up display and began searching for the closest white or blue circle that he could find on it.
"Looks like there's an elementary school four blocks to my north that is supposed to be another civilian position. Since this camp was a bust, I guess I'll head there," he reported to his recording.
With that, he began running through the grassy field once again to reach the forest belt of the park, still paranoid about getting sniped from one of the taller buildings that oversaw the entire park.
The Schnee analyzed the sun's light slowly dissipating above him and concluded that he would need to turn on his night vision in the next ten to fifteen minutes.
As he drew closer to the border of the forest belt, he recognized a strange-looking line on the ground that budded right up against the threshold between the grass and the trees.
Whitley estimated that the aberration was roughly one hundred yards long but only a few yards wide. He assumed that from the air, it would look more like something drew a thin dark line in the grass, assuming someone could see it from the sky at all. It certainly was out of place for a park to have such a weird blemish of this size on its surface.
Curious, he changed his course slightly and started to head in the direction of the dark line to inspect it.
Reaching it, he realized that the line was actually a massive superstructure of camo netting that covered the ground for the entire length and width of the line in the field. He also saw that the netting was fairly level with the ground, so he ascertained that whatever it was covering was probably a hole or a trench.
Whitley speculated about the need for the camouflage to cover something that was buried as he drew closer.
He wondered if the Mistrali Army or some rebel group was trying to hide a weapons cache or some other supplies from aerial view. The teenager could only theorize what could be important enough for an unknown faction to dig a large hole for it and make such an effort to conceal it from aerial surveillance.
"But if they're trying to hide something, placing it near a refugee camp seems like such an odd choice," he frowned in confusion.
Incredibly bewildered at why this hole was put here, he squatted down to pull away a thick clump of camouflage netting and tossed it out of the way. Doing this revealed that there was a black tarp under it, splayed out over what Whitley could see as disturbed earth from digging.
He kept his visor trained on what he was about to uncover.
If he was about to reveal some massive enemy secret, then he definitely wanted there to be undisputable video evidence of it.
He grabbed the end of the black tarp and peeled it off of the ground, before having to use both hands to completely move it to the side.
Whitley stared down to see that below the black tarp, was dirt.
They had filled in their hole to bury whatever it was they wanted to remain unseen.
The Schnee shook his head in disappointment, there was no way he was going to start digging anything up. He didn't have a shovel, and he was already wasting enough time on this instead of working to complete the ADT mission for tonight.
Just as he was about to walk away, his eyes caught an abnormal shape in the dirt.
From what he could tell, it appeared to be something that was partially buried, but the people responsible for filling the trench back in failed to cover it completely.
"If Mistral wants people to stop mocking their incompetence, then they need to stop deserving it," he thought, rolling his eyes.
Perplexed by the odd shape, he squinted as he brought his face closer for a better view.
Even with the darkened sky outside, Whitley could still clearly make out what he was seeing.
It was a hand.
Whitley leaped back from the dirt mound on reflex, his eyes seared open in shock.
He began breathing heavily while continuing to stare at it, completely overwhelmed by what he was seeing.
"F-Fuck," he whispered softly as he began to step back from the mound.
Earlier, he was bothered about not feeling much when he killed men for the first time in his life today. The ease at which he was able to end the lives of others had made him emotionally squirm with discomfort since his first encounter with the enemy.
But this was different.
Those were armed men trying to kill him.
This was not.
Despite being stunned, a thought managed to reach him.
While continuing to step back from the mass of camo netting and black tarp, he gazed down the line at the enormous length of the filled-in trench. Then, he snapped his head back towards the refugee camp, and remembering that he couldn't find a single civilian in any tent, everything came together in his brain.
"There's no way! I have to be jumping to conclusions! Why do this?! It's nonsensical!" his thoughts pleaded, the logical part of his brain trying to rationalize what he had just witnessed.
When he recalled the number of toys he saw at the camp, he started to feel sick to his stomach. His brain was overstimulated with a thousand different thoughts burning through his head with blinding speed, anything to distract him from the horror before him.
For a reason that Whitley Schnee could not explain, the next thing that popped into his head was the joke that Colonel Acacia Haze had told Frost Stack earlier that day.
He now recognized the twisted dark humor for what it was.
"That-That's not funny at all."
Author's Note:
Sorry this update took so long, I have a lot of things going on.
I'm just glad that I can work on the meat of this story now.
References:
"he canted his rifle at an angle as he cautiously pied around the corner of the barrier." – Pieing is an IRL room-clearing tactic
"The lone teen held his carbine in a c-clamp grip as he fired single shots into the lead man," – C-Clamp is an IRL method for holding a rifle/carbine
"all five of them were completely flatlined." – Cyberpunk. Slang for dying.
"took a sip from his trusty ADT-pattern AquaBak." – Fallout: New Vegas
"AquaBak." – IRL CamelBak