“Why’re you always using that goddamn thing?” she criticized, eyeballing Shinden, “It’s not like you’ll find me with my eagle feather headband in battle. That fell out of fashion a little while ago.” While I hated to admit it, she had a point. Naira Skara, though we just called her 'Scars' – not exactly a normal woman by any metric, nor is she one to shy away from speaking her mind. She’s also the only one who can routinely outdrink me in this outfit. And, like her name suggests, the only one who can outdo me on scars - both of her arms and one leg were severed, and she has third-degree burn patches all across her back. None of us could even hope to compete.
“You see my M4, right?” I scowled back at her, “Hell, you’ve been asking me that since this shit started.”
“And here we are a whole year later. Same shit, different day,” Scars rolled her eyes and refocused downrange, “Speaking of same shit, they still haven’t moved… What’re they waiting for…”
“Probably waiting for you to stop your little lovers’ quarrel with… What’s the guy of the week’s name? I keep forgetting…” I fired back at her, tucking my rifle into the small of my hip.
“Same guy as it was last week when you asked me that, and the week before,” she sneered, “As opposed to… What’s your poison, again? Oh, right, Vicky…”
“Hey now, she’s actually pretty nice,” I stopped her.
“She smells like she has rabies, for Christ’s sake!” Scars brushed at me.
“What? What’s that even mean?”
“Because her body’s not seen a drop of water in years… Know what, forget it, I wish these people would just get it the fuck over with already…” the corporal restlessly moved around in the prone position, her rifle dancing from target to target as we peered over at the enemy encampment. One of three battalions. They saw us, too, of course. Part of me was convinced that the only reason why they didn’t attack us is because they still believed that we had ammunition, and any semblance of morale. Instead, all we do is point our useless guns at them and argue all day long. We just make it look like we’re doing it with purpose while only spending our last couple magazines hunting coyotes. This was the world’s most anticlimactic stalemate, that’s for sure.
“Mmh, you say that now, yet when it comes time to actually face them–”
“Hey now, I’m not like you and Zams and Moto and whomever the fuck else,” she interrupted, “I’m not just gonna keep giving them ground over and over until I wind up back in Japan. Unlike you, I don’t have a home to go back to if this shit falls through.”
“I’m well aware of that,” I nodded.
“So why don’t you shut the fuck up, then, you and your fucking sword,” she angrily shot back at me, “Respectfully. Sarge.” Scars was maybe one of about a couple hundred indigenous Apache left, though not by birth. Her ancestry was frankly really confusing, especially if one looked at her. She certainly had that pronounced brow line and facial structure, but then she had lighter brown hair, lighter eyes, and pale skin. In all likelihood she was one of the hundreds of refugees adopted into the tribe as a baby. Fuck knows anymore. This war’s left so many people questioning shit like that. People cling on to what they know, who they were raised with, and that could be literally anyone. You start off in Oklahoma, guess what, NUSA invades. Then your family all move to Arizona. Guess what, they invade again. Then off to SoCal, and wow, more invading! Island-hopping between cultures like that left so many without any true sense of identity or purpose, probably the greatest tragedy of this fucking war.
“You done?” I criticized, “Or you need another few moments before we restart again? Because it’s not like you’ve not performed this same song and dance for months.”
“Fuck you, Tokai.”
“Look, Scars - all I’m saying is it’s getting stale. Now if you’re so eager to get back to your homeland, there it is, just take out your white flag. I’m sure they won’t mind.”
“Do you even know why you’re fighting?” she lashed out again, “Or are you just here because some fucker in power told you to be here? Or – no, wait, even better, because it’s part of your code of honor or some such bullshit. This war never made any fucking difference to you and your people apart from being a mild inconvenience. You have zero concept of being invaded – Hell, the only person with any living memory of that happening is your boss. And last I checked, he’s not the one fighting.”
“Mmh,” I grunted, looking over the side of the radar installation we sat atop, “No, you’re right about that. I came over under orders when I was 17 years old. Fresh out of training. Heh, you know what’s funny? Arasaka wanted to show their superiority over here, so they had people like us instruct you guys. As if we knew more about war than you.”
“Yeah, I remember the Zamster tellin’ me about how you guys expected a hero’s welcome or something,” she rolled her eyes, “Man, what bullshit.” Part of me loves her stupid little nicknames. Of course, Ayuzawa hated being called Zams, but he'll get over it.
“What’d you think at the time?”
“Well, respectfully, Sarge? I’ve been learning to war since I was a toddler, and not because I wanted to. We all knew this day was coming. It took our tribes fuckin’ ages to recover and God forbid we’re allowed to just live peacefully. But nooo, we’re part of the American heritage or whatever bullshit they’re spewing out,” Naira spat off the side, “Too many of us forgot how they treated us all in the first place, if you ask me.”
“Yeah,” I knelt down beside her, “That I know intimately.”
“Mm, you mentioned how samurai go through the same sort of process,” she nodded, “Ironic given how safe you are from everyone but each other. At least we tried to cooperate. As it turns out, the mutual struggle of existence is an excellent motivator for banding together.”
“Heh, true, we have quite a few rivalries between clans,” I laughed, “Mine descended from the Taira clan. So we only do business with others from the same parent house. Chiba, Oda, Miura, Uesugi, Tanegashima, blah blah blah. But you’ll never catch us in bed with a Tachibana. It’s all… really confusing.”
“Pff, more like really incestuous, if you ask me,” she scoffed, “Well whatever. Why’d you come over here, anyway?”
“Like you said,” I shrugged back at her, “Orders.”
“Yeah, but what’d you care? Why bother signing up in the first place if you weren’t threatened?”
I paused and scratched the side of my head – it was a fair question.
“The fact that you can’t give me a straight answer’s pretty telling.”
“Yeah, I suppose,” I mulled, “If I had to put a bead on it, I’d say I did it because it felt right… I don’t know.”
“Felt right? What about this feels right?”
“Well not this, specifically…” I glanced down, “Maybe that’s not the right term… Uhm… I don’t know how my translator will accept this… An understanding? No… It hurts…”
“It hurts…?”
“Look, it’s hard sometimes. In Japanese, you can say the same thing and it’ll produce three different meanings depending on context. The translator isn’t perfect.”
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“You can just say you don’t know – it’s fine," Scars replied with a hint of a condescending tone.
“I think I do know, in my guts,” I muttered out-loud, “I just don’t have the words for it.”
“Mm, fair enough…” Scars glanced back down through her glass, “Looks like the company commander’s out for his nightly stroll again. Man, I wish I could put one between his eyes…”
“Yeah, me too,” I said while grinding my teeth together, “Guy’s responsible for killing off most of the Vegas Plex crew.”
“Really? That was him?”
“Yup… Colonel Warner. He was the guy who called in the carpet bombing.”
“No shit. And he's ugly. Heh, now I gotta blow him away…” she grinned, tucking herself into a good firing position.
“Eh, what the hell…” I mulled, heading over to the spotting designator and training it on his head, “Alright, COMINT, relay, this is Corsac Two. Requesting package clearance for conditions in Grid Two-One.”
“ZZHHT, this is COMINT,” Scars imitated through the side of her mouth, “Package is received. Own wind speed is two-six-zero at three knots, target’s is two-five-zero at three knots. Barometric pressure 29.6 inches of mercury.”
“Roger that, COMINT,” I mock-relayed, “Shooter, adjust three clicks up, five clicks right.”
“Roger that, range me,” she instructed.
“Range is 860 meters, target is moving at approximately two kilometers per hour to the west.”
“Copy…” she mumbled, doing the calculations all in her head before making the necessary adjustments, “On target.”
“COMINT, please relay that the package is ready to be delivered.”
“ZZBBBT, COMINT, you have confirmation, send the package.”
“Roger. Corsac Two, package confirmed.” I reached down and gave her a quick tap on her left foot, signaling for her to send it.
“Mmm…” she moaned before lining up, her body as stable as a rock, “And… BAM!”
“COMINT, package delivered,” I muttered.
“Confirm, COMINT,” she returned before standing back up and tucking her rifle into the base of her hip, “Ah… Could always use some good old-fashioned therapy. Heh… Though it’d be far more satisfying if we had bullets.”
“Well at least we have food, that’s a start,” I shrugged, “Besides, you heard ‘em during their last check-in. How much longer will this possibly last, right?”
“Bah! Don’t make me laugh,” she chuckled heartily, “Ribs still hurt after the last sortie.”
“Heh, I bet,” I grinned at her before looking over, the fog bank slowly rolling in and masking the enemy movement yet again, “Looks like the sky’s about to awaken any time now.”
“Mm…” she hummed in return, “Could definitely go for a hot shower after this.”
“Oh? Got a date lined up or something, Scars?”
“Pff, I wish,” she laughed, “Nah, just… the sound of the trickling water helps me relax, y’know?”
I returned a slight bow of my head in acknowledgement. “Yeah, I get it… But hey, then you’ll lose all that caked-on natural camouflage you worked so hard on.”
“Hah! Fuck you, Sarge.”
“Fuck you too, Corporal.”
Suddenly my radio buzzed in, interrupting probably the first decent conversation I’ve had with Naira in a couple weeks. “Corsac Two, come in.”
“Corsac Two, acknowledging.”
“Ma’am, we have another MIA.” Fuck… Not again.
“Mmh…” I muttered to myself before chiming back in, “Who is it this time?”
“Corsac One-Five, Sergeant,” the voice crackled. Ayuzawa was never good with this information delivery…
“…Copy…” I muttered. That was Kiyo, our best techie…
“Tokai…?” Scars whispered, “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I nodded, glancing back out to the wilds, “No, actually. I’m pissed.”
This war has cost us all too much… Too much. We couldn’t even get our fucking people back. We just had to leave the bodies out there, because we didn’t have the manpower to spare. We didn’t even have ammunition. After that fucking Colonel Hansen came around our backside and blocked off all air traffic, we’ve been stuck on an island ever since. Now all we have are our handguns and a few bullets for the big shit? The sad thing is that we had a whole host of 155mm ordnance, but no guns to fire them with. So we’ve been trapping the whole area, preventing them from moving in, yet we couldn’t do any more than that. The second they decided to swoop in with a helicopter, we’d stand no chance. How the fuck is that fair…
And now we just lost our best techie, the one person responsible for maintaining this fucking signal jammer. So when this goes out, and it will go out – then we’re all dead anyway. Fucking fantastic.
I climbed down with Scars and headed back inside, propping my head up on the junk pile. It was her turn to get the mattress this morning. We had little choice but to hole up inside during the day; we simply didn’t have enough resources to sustain daytime desert operations, not in this fucking heat. “Keep your armor on,” I instructed her, “We can probably expect some rain today.”
“Mm, maybe they’ll be kind enough to leave us some more UXO on the runway like last time,” she quipped, getting comfortable. I can’t even remember the last time this place got actual rainfall, aside from the artillery barrages, of course. Fuck microclimates.
“Return to sender?” I laughed, thinking back to the one time when we lobbed some unexploded ordnance over the Wall with a makeshift mortar.
“Always, it’s good practice,” she grinned before turning over.
I should probably try to sleep as well… Fuck. Fucking Kiyo… I told her we had enough food… Why did she go out… Fuck…
Shinden sat across my lap, giving me a convenient place to rest my arms as I rustled around, trying to find a comfy spot. Good luck in this shithole. But I'd do the team no good without my senses sharp.
“Hey, Sergeant,” Ayuzawa came up to me, “Got a minute?”
“Sure, what’s up?”
“Got a new package comin’ in. Guy’s a Militech whistleblower. Apparently got some critical intelligence.”
“Oh?” I raised an eyebrow, “What kind of intelligence?”
“Fuck if I know, but word is it’s big. Like, war-changing big.”
“No shit?” I said before shaking my head dismissively, “That’d be the what, third or fourth time so far?”
“Yeah, tell me about it…” he mumbled, “But we got him comin’ in anyway. SIGINT wants us on the job.”
“Alright, what, snatch-and-grab again?” I got up to his level.
“Mhm,” he nodded, “He’ll be in the city in about a week’s time, maybe two. You’re up to bat this time.”
“Yeah, okay,” I said through chapped lips, licking them a little to help fill in the cracks developing from talking for several hours today, “I’ll see you this evening, we’ll go over the details then.”
“Sergeant,” he replied, dismissing himself to the main hangar. He was a good kid. Only about 20 years old, I think he just turned 20 a couple weeks ago. Or he was about to, I forget now… Whatever, what difference does it really make anymore. I remember him mentioning he grew up poor and never even had a single birthday present, like not one, from his family. He said the house was falling apart – you stepped in through the front door and had to walk around a fucking hole in the floor because the cheap syn-bamboo had all rotted away. A tragedy considering he had a really bright head on his shoulders – arguably more than any of us. If he had the money, he’d have gone great places, for sure. But he wasn’t even able to get on the radar of Arasaka, let alone an Academy scholarship, until he joined the military.
We all have our stories, why we fight, who we fight for. And many of us argue about it pretty much constantly, which is fair, considering this unit was about half-Japanese, half-everyone else. A lot of cultural bullshit to unpack there. And a lot of racism at first. ‘Didn’t think I’d live to see the day when the Japs would save us,’ they used to tell me. And I’d fire right back with comments describing them all as ‘savages.’ And back and forth and back and forth it went… It took a while for us to truly understand why they were fighting, I think. For many, it was just orders. We went over here because of bullshit corporate interests that they dressed up in a slick business suit, telling us it was for the ‘greater good’ and we were ‘fighting for our family’s honor’ or whatever the fuck else. Hell, I doubt I’d have even brought Shinden along had it not been for such promises, but here we are.
Taking out these piercings was getting to be a bit of a pain, though. Should probably just leave them in while I sleep, but fuck me, is it uncomfortable when I turn over and then hit them on corrugated metal. Heh, I wonder if I even like jewelry. Or playing with dolls. Or other ‘girlish’ bullshit – how would I even know? I felt like the last 15 years were all just a blur. What the fuck did I even want to do with my life before all this shit? Dancing is a career only for the best of the best. I sure as hell didn’t want to be a politician or business owner like my family… Maybe it’s just that simple. Take what my family does, and do the literal opposite.
“Corsac Two, come in,” the radio rang again just as I was getting more sleepy… Fuck.
“What is it this time…” I muttered.
“Ma’am, second team’s in position on the array. Orders?” shouted Moto over the comms channel. He always needed babysitting, the poor kid.
“Just tell me if you see them setting up mortars,” I grumbled annoyedly, “Good night.”
“Oh, uh… Good night, sergeant,” he replied weakly.
–
“Scream…”
Mom…?
Mom… I’m scared.
Dad…? Can you pick me up?
Please?
“The fire’s spreading! GET OUT!…”
“Dammit, Tokai! We TRUSTED you!…”
“Take the gun…” the man said in Mexican Spanish, “Just take it. Help me…"
-
"GAAH!" I shot up again… Fuck… I still can't sleep…
No… no, I need a walk or something. Maybe that'll do me some good… Fuck this. Fuck it. Why was I out here… Why were any of us out here… I don't even know anymore…
