The Items They Lugged

[Goron40]

CHAPTER 1

Heavy rain poured down through the upper canopy of the Wilderness. I trudged along, my rifle at my side, boots sloshing through the mud. During our training in the desert, I would have given anything for such weather. Now the life-giving substace was becoming nothing more than a nuscience.

Sarge called out up ahead. I didn't hear it, but I knew it could mean one of two things. Either we had come across an enemy platoon, which was unlikely, I could hear no gunfire, or we were stoping to make camp for the night. The latter was the more probable, and as it turned out, the correct guess.

I pulled up and sat down against a cliff. It had a slight overhang that sheilded me from the rain, but the cold still came through. Around my rock, the rest of my squad searched for similar positions to rest for the night.

To my left, Doc lay out a first aid kit. Doc was our medic. I don't think I ever learned what his real name was. All we ever called him was "Doc." I never really got to know him too well.

As I watched, he lay out his pack, simply to check and make sure that all his supplies were still there. Not like there was anything he could have done had there been something gone, but he wasn't one to be ignorant. His first aid supplies, a pistol, and a few spare clips. Not very heavy, maybe 10 pounds at most. He was a medic, not a soldier, and he showed it. Doc, the youngest of our squad, was the most timid one in the group, probably because he was the "newbie." He had shown up a couple of weeks back, and we were just starting to get to know him. He hid behind a mask of shyness, and never did anything too rash.

I shifted my gaze to Shell. Shell had set himself down on a rock not too far from me. He had removed his pack. I don't blame him either, that thing wighed a ton. An anti-tank RPG, several land mines, grenades, dynamite, and any other explosive you could think of. His bag must have weighed 50 pounds or more. And then there was the cannon that he had ripped off a fallen mech. None of us knew why he carried it, as without the mech it was once attached to it was useless. It was strapped to his pack's side.

Shell's real name was Leroy. Leroy J. We called him Shell. He had always struck me as a bit crazy. Not that being out here wouldn't have driven you nuts, but Shell was like that as long as I had known him. He was one to blow up anything that moved without a second thought.

Once, Doc caught a squirrel in a carefully planned trap involving a box, a stick, and some land mine trip wires. The guy taught it to do tricks, he fed it, and cared for it. It was a bit odd, but it was the only thing out here that he really communicated with. At least until Shell blew it up. Shell had claimed he was "bored," so he strapped a land mine to the squirrel and sent it up into the stratosphere. The rest of the squad thought it was hilarious, and even Doc didn't seem too upset by it. If anything, it brought us closer together.

In front of me, Wes removed the scope from his sniper and adjusted it. Wes was quiet. Not quiet like Doc was, but he was a professional kind of quiet. I guess it kind of came with the job. Being a sniper meant a lot of sneaking around, and often he seperated himself from the squad to get a better vantage point for a shot. But when we weren't on the field, he was just as looney as the rest of us.

He finished looking at his scope and put it back onto his gun, which he had slung onto his pack. Wes was also a mechanic before the war, and as such he carried a wrench along with his weapons. He came in handy fixing up the mechs to use after Shell blew them up. Wes went to join Shell, who had managed to locate a can of tuna. The pair of them laughed together as they ate and discussed the day. I was hungry, so I went to join them.

When I sat down and took a bite from the tuna, Bruiser came over to join us. Bruiser was a large guy, unlike the rest of us. Something had happened during his cloning process that had made him bigger and burlier than the others. Shell was the only one close to his size, mostly because of the things he carried.

Jeff was Brusier's real name. His assualt rifle looked small compared to him though. As he sat down, the two grenades attached to the front of his uniform swung slightly. I patted my own assualt rifle, which never left my side.

Bruiser was as rambuncous as you would expect him to be. He was loud, but careful with his words. He never said anything he didn't mean. Once we had seen him take down a mech by himself, with his bare hands no less. The kid was strong, both physically and mentally. Like Shell though, he seemed to have lost some of his mental strength out here.

"Hey! What the hell are you all still doing up? When I call for a rest, that means sleep! And put the damn beer away."

Sarge walked away, evidently frustrated with us. Usually he was a good-natured guy. Unfortunately when he got tired, this was a different story. He was a veteran of some war before this, and was older thant he rest of us. Much older. That wasn't saying too much, though, we were just kids. Sarge actually looked like a soldier, with scars and a grizzled face to match.

Wes giggled like a little school girl and took a beer from the 6-pack before creeping off to his rock. I too, returned to my cliff, ready for sleep.

Further up the rock outcropping, Sarge stood, looking down into the valley below us. There wasn't really anything to see down there, with the rain and all. As I was just falling asleep, Sarge clambered off his perch and entered his foxhole.

[3kul]

((Let me know if it's not ok to post here and I'll delete my post, I just thought I'd throw you a compliment or two having finished reading this . It's a pretty interesting introduction to these new characters, I gather that they're in a war of some sort so I'm now wondering which (if any of them) are going to end up dead and where you'll be going with all of this.

Anyways, I'm looking forward to the next part, keep up the good work Goron .))

[Goron40]

CHAPTER 2: Strife

I was awoken violently the next morning. From the light level there was no way I could tell that it was morning other than Shell's rude awakening.

"Get up dumbass, it's morning."

After my eyes had adjusted to being open (it didn't take to long, for it was near pitch black), I tried to get my bearings. I tried to stand up, and smacked my head on the cliff overhang that I had slept under. Simultaneously, I was shushed by the entire squad. It was only then that I noticed the noise. There was the footsteps of men, along with the clanking of metal. Shell had clambered up to the cliff edge next to the rest of the squad, who were watching the cliffs below.

I followed suit and crawled up on my stomach, imitating them. The rain had not stopped, and the rock was wet. I soon forgot about my discomfort when I observed the source of the racket. A platoon of Corporate foot soldiers trooped along in the wake of two mechs that were clearing trees for the rest of the squad. It was an making an awful din.

I felt Bruiser tap my shoulder and shimmy away from the cliff edge. The rest of the squad and I joined him, with the exception of Wes, who remained on the edge, peering through his scope at the contingent. We picked up our various weapons of destruction and turned to Sarge. He made a few motions with his hands, and we flanked our way around the cliff into the valley below.

I stepped carefully, willing the ground not to give out after the heavy rain storm. The slope was steep, and it was a miracle that we maintained stealth. A single slip-up would have alerted the enemy to our presence.

Shell was the first one to level ground, and he wasted no time making sure that the rest of us reached the spot safely as well. Instead, he pushed ahead through the tall plants to an interception point with the platoon. I reached the base of the slope next, in time to see Shell lay out a land mine and retreat back to my position, fiddling with the self-test on his RPG.

I moved on my stomach through the soft dirt right to the edge of the path, where a small indentation could provide cover from the explosion that was about to occur. I held my rifle ready, and gazed through the bush as one of the mech's feet smashed down, not two feet from my head. A tree collapsed from the mech only a foot further away.

The troops behind the bots seemed to have grown tired of searching every bush as a recon squad like this one should have been doing. They occasionally put their heads into a shrub, and immediately withdrew, as though they were expecting to find nothing. The first man passed inches from my face. I could have reached out and touched his leg.

My train of thought was interrupted as Shell's trap did its work. Shifting slightly, I could see one of the mechs collapse sideways, one leg completely incinerated. Almost instantly, the tracer of Wes' sniper bullet passed through one of the soft targets, killing him instantly.

These two shots threw the squad into a panic, and they began randomly firing. Even the second mech pilot seemed to be feeling his own mortality, as his chainguns ripped through the foliage.

On the far side of the path, I heard a different sound interrupt the continuous fire of the panicking squadron. Bruiser opened fire with his rifle, downing a man in an instant. How he got there anyways, I have no idea. As if from nowhere, a fragmentation grenade entered the scene and scattered the the men, removing life and limb. Shell's work no doubt. To my right and left I could hear pistol shots. Sarge and Doc. Another one of Wes' bullets had torn another man down.

Unknowingly, I had been firing for a few minutes now. The X-GORON training really kicked in here. The fact that all of us could do this on instinct was a testament to it.

As I reached for a new clip, Shell's RPG tore through a tree and into the mech's hull. It created a spectacular explosion, sending shrapnel everywhere. A piece of it collided with my rifle as I inserted the new clip. Ignoring this, I resumed firing.

The man fell from Sarge's pistol. The bullet speared him through the head and splattered the leaves behind him. We rose from our concealed positions and observed the destruction.

Shell was the first to issue his cheer. The rest of us couldn't help but join him; I could hear Wes cawing from his perch. Even Doc managed to give a triumphant cry. Only Sarge kept his GORON reserve.